The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2021 - Issue 30

Lisa Ogun’ attended The Barbican Centre in London to watch and be entertained by RSC’s latest staged offering. Comedy of Errors bitetheatre T hey say, ‘laughter is the best medicine (for the soul)’ and given the long, and for some, lonesome months we’ve had to endure, due to the pandemic of 2020, the laughter-triggering production of RSC’s re- scheduled Comedy of Errors performance at the renowned Barbican Centre in London, was just what the soul needed. Oh, what a laugh! And by that, I mean it in the true meaning of the words, as I held my jawline and belly from laughing aches a good few times during the show. Having never read or watched Comedy of Er- rors before, I was curious about what I was go- ing to see. Prior research gave me an insight that it is a play about two sets of twins and multiple identity confusions set over a short period, being William Shakespeare’s shortest play published. Bearing that in mind, I was confident that RSC would not let me down performance-wise and oh, how right I was! The play set on a stripped-back setting of turquoise cubism and wooden staging de- sign opened up with an acapella ensemble harmonising the typical sound-checks heard over mics by MCs, giving us the first light humour to the play. The ensemble is even- tually stripped back to just four singers who stay with the scenes throughout the play and melodically harmonise to scene changes and cleverly become the on-scene crowd members in some scenes. I found this directorial choice clever, adding colour and artistic depth to the various scenes. Not wanting to give too much away as this play is running until the very end of the year (31 Dec 2021), this diversely casted play opens up with old man Egeon (Antony Bunsee), having been caught for breaking immigration rules, he pleads with the Duke of Ephesus, Solinus, (Nicholas Prasad) to spare his life in an en- dearing soliloquy to melt one’s heart. Antony Images courtesy of Pete Le May (c) RSC