The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2021 - Issue 30

bitetheatre plays the frail man ever so well that your heart is drawn with heart-warming empathy imme- diately. He tells of his story to find his twin sons - Antipholus of Syracuse (Guy Lewis) and An- tipholus of Ephesus (Rowan Polonski); their twin servants Dromio of Syracuse (Jonathan Broadbent) and Dromio of Ephesus (Greg Haiste) and his wife that, decades before, had been separated by a shipwreck. The Duke grants him a day to find someone to help par- don him. What ensues is a sitcom of occurrences as both Antipholuses and each Dromios are misrecognised, wrongly accused, and repri- manded either physically or verbally for ac- tions unbeknown to each. Even the twin mas- ters misrecognise their servants, which bring more hilarity to the situation. With each scene change to a high energet- ic harmonised song or soundscape from the four-people singing ensemble (Alex Saunders, Dale Harris, David Jones, Dunia Botic, Helena Raeburn and/or Robert Jenkins), each scene portrayed of the great Bard’s play was filled with gags, laughs and quick humour - some of them reflective of current times (mini-spoiler: the scene of knives packed in polystyrene and a face-mask being pulled over a face in discon- tent). Added to that was the gaggle of charac- ters that make up the play, each with their lev- el of fun and comical personality in the shape of Antipholus of Ephesus’ pregnant wife, Adri- ana (Naomi Sheldon) whose ‘woman-scorned’ acting in a particularly highly-charged scene still has me internally giggling each time I re- member. Courtesan (Toyin Ayedun-Alase) whose larg- er-than-life sassy attitude had you almost wanting to punctuate each of her lines with a finger-clicking head-flip; the high-strung atti- tude Balthasar (Patrick Osborne) who plays a speech-disabled merchant, and his dry-witted BSL-interpreter henchman bodyguard (Dy- frig Morris); Goldsmith Angelo (Baker Muka- sa) whose insistent attitude of a frustrated and disconcerted businessman, with heavy West African accent and cultural nuances, add a di- versified level of humour. The exaggerated, earth-hugging Doctor Pinch (Alfred Clay) whose actions to cleanse the per- ceived ‘mad’ Antipholus and Dromio of Ephe- sus is reminiscent of the 1960s flower-power culture further added to the titter of humour. Luciana (Avita Jay), Adriana’s much calmer and thus reasonable, younger sister who is be- mused by Antipholus of Syracuse’s advances amongst the dilemma of identity confusions played out and Amelia (Zoe Lambert) as the Abbess with a no-nonsense attitude not typ- ical of a quiet, peaceful abbess, are some of the key characters that give this production its high energy, colour and life.