‘Comedy of Errors’ annoyingly true to its name

I don't know that I've ever seen a more annoying professional-level production than the Utah Shakespearean Festival's "The Comedy of Errors."

The Bard's earliest (perhaps) script doesn't ask all that much of a director. It's got a plot full of guaranteed laughs -- if a director allows it to naturally unfold. Two sets of twins -- two noblemen and their slaves -- are separated in a shipwreck "long, long ago." When their lives, unbeknownst to them all, intersect in the same neighborhood, misunderstandings run amok. The simplicity of the set-up could make for an "I Love Lucy" episode and should dispel the rumor that William Shakespeare was a hoity-toity writer.

Things start out promisingly in director Kirk Boyd's mounting. The set, by Troy Hemmerling, suggests a candy-cane happy world full of Road Runner adventures. Tim Dial's costumes are a parade of giddy color. You're immediately put in the mood for knockabout farce.

But then the actors start talking.

There's nothing wrong with most of them. But their talents are smothered in a directorial concept so suffocating not even Shakespeare can survive.

Boyd apparently decided that what this situation comedy is really about is slapstick, mugging, and nonstop broad movement. (The only time the production slows down is in its final moments, and they're lovely, because they allow the show to breathe.)

This commedia dell'arte approach could suit Shakespeare's piece of enjoyable nonsense just fine. But Boyd commits the amateur's mistake of trying to force the laughs too early. He doesn't permit the mechanics of the plot to build steam, so that the craziness can grow organically. The humor feels superimposed. Two rubber chickens, for example, dominate the second act for no reason other than to produce numerous dumb bits. (What does Boyd find so funny about rubber chickens?) If Boyd had allowed the story to dominate, then perhaps the action wouldn't feel inhuman and false.

I left "The Comedy of Errors" wishing I had seen "The Comedy of Errors." What I got instead was Kirk Boyd's errors in comedy.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.