Theater Review—

Baumgartner’s Return Signals A Summer Treat, This Time With ‘Comedy of Errors’

By Julie Stern

Every summer in recent years, Ruth Anne Baumgartner has stepped up to the plate and delivered a home run. That is, for three weeks this theatrical scholar and professor of literature takes over the helm of The Town Players’ Little Theatre in Newtown and offers those lucky enough to have gotten tickets a lesson in how Elizabethan comedy was meant to be performed.

For all modern Americans who learned from experience in high school that Shakespeare is boring, stilted, draggy and linguistically over their heads, Ms Baumgartner proves time and again that given a skilled director, who can both attract and guide a talented cast, Shakespeare can amaze and delight an audience of all ages.

This is clear once again in this season’s production of The Comedy of Errors, which happens to be Shakespeare’s first attempt at comedy, and a work less often seen than his more famous later ones (Twelfth Night, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Based on several works by the Roman playwright Plautus, who wrote in the Second Century BC, the play uses devices that may be familiar to fans of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (also based on a Plautus farce) including a father searching for his twins who were lost at sea and separated from one another, and a wise-cracking slave who helps himself by helping his master.

In this case the “comedy” revolves around there being two sets of separated twins floating around: Before the shipwreck the identical twin sons of a Syracusan merchant were each bound to separate spars, along with their personal servants (also identical twins). While their mother drowned, and their father drifted, one son was rescued and raised to be a citizen of Ephesus, where, rewarded by Duke Solinus, he married and became the wealthy and highly respected citizen, Antipholus of Ephesus, who is still attended by his man-servant, Dromio.

His brother (also called Antipholus) was rescued by fishermen, and raised along with his servant, (also called Dromio) back in Syracuse, although their father was unaware of his presence.

The action takes place on a single day, when Egeon, the bereft father, is arrested in Ephesus where he is wandering in search of his lost children. A law forbidding foreigners makes him subject to the death penalty unless he can find someone to pay a ransom of 1,000 ducats.

Meanwhile, Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse have hit town as well. Unaware of each other’s existence, but wearing identical costumes and facial hair (and in the case of the two Dromios, bearing an uncanny actual resemblance) the “boys from Syracuse” are immediately mistaken for their Ephesian namesakes. This leads to a host of amorous and financial misunderstandings with Antipholus’ wife, sister-in-law (being courted by the other Antipholus), courtesan, kitchen wench (pursuing both Dromios), local merchants who deliver the goods to one twin and then demand payment from the other, a “doctor” who declares one brother “possessed by the devil” and an abbess who locks the other one up in a cloister, and so forth.

Before he wrote his own plays, Shakespeare was an actor who truly understood character; thus despite the silliness of the plot, there is genuine depth and substance to all those involved in this story.  This is well served by the quality of the actors Ruth Anne Baumgartner has assembled, and the sure hand with which she has controlled their interpretation and paced the action of the comedy. This show moves!

Just as Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane were the show-stealers in whatever they did, from Forum to The Producers, it is hard to top the work of Leslie Van Etten Broatch and Elise Bochinski as the two droll Dromios. However, Aaron Kaplan and Mark Frattaroli, in the parts of the adventurous bachelor Antipholus and his solider and more substantial family-man-brother, are equally good.

Then there is the fiery and dynamic Lucy Babbitt, giving a terrific performance as Antipholus’ wife, Adriana,  supported by Kathleen Mooney as her sister, Luciana, a bit shocked but also romantically intrigued at being suddenly courted by her “brother-in-law.”

Town Players stalwart Ron Pawlikowski gives a wistfully human portrait of the despairing Egeon,  facing death but still anxious for any news of his missing children.

Keegan Finlayson handles the Pontius Pilate-like role of Duke Solinus, who truly pities the old man but is bound to uphold his own law. Joanne Stanley is hilarious as the large and amorous kitchen wench determined to catch her Dromio, and New Zealand native Vanessa Bronder Alward has surprises in store as well as a dignified warning in her role as the abbess.

What really ties it all together and provides the Elizabethan buzz of merriment and bustle is Ms Baumgartner’s use of singers, dancers and a piper throughout the play as a way of breaking up the action and dividing the scenes. On the small stage they dominate for a few moments, creating the feeling of a crowded seaport, and then fade away naturally, allowing all attention to be focused on the action of the play.

Comedy of Errors is a real treat, for people of all ages, and it’s too bad that it’s only running through the month of July.

(Performances continue weekends through July 28. The Little Theatre, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, can be reached by calling 270-9144.)