Saturday 30 April 2016

The Comedy of Errors (Series 6 Episode 3)

First transmitted 24th December 1983

Double trouble for Roger Daltrey and Michael Kitchen

Cast: Michael Kitchen (Antipholus of Ephesus/Antipholus of Syracuse), Roger Daltrey (Dromio of Ephesus/Dromio of Syracuse), Suzanne Bertish (Adriana), Joanne Pearce (Luciana), Cyril Cusack (Egeon), Charles Gray (Duke of Ephesus), Wendy Hiller (Emilia), Ingrid Pitt (Courtesan), Nicholas Chagrin (Master of Mime), Sam Dastor (Angelo), David Kelly (Balthazar), Frank Williams (Officer), Marsha Fitzalan (Luce), Geoffrey Rose (Dr. Pinch)
Director: James Cellan Jones

I think the track record of the Shakespearean comedies in this series has been pretty well established: what works well in front of a live audience doesn’t always translate well to the screen devoid of that crucial audience interaction and the buzz of the actors feeding off the audience and vice versa. Which is to say that this is, despite a few flashes and odd bits of business, not the funniest production you are ever going to see. There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, despite being easily the shortest play in the series, it still seems longer than it should, because it lacks energy and momentum. Too many scenes go on a fraction too long, not enough attempt is made to marry up the importance to the series of clarity and delivery of dialogue with the essential pace farce relies on. In particular, too much time is spent labouriously spelling out the various errors made by the characters, overegging the gags. As the momentum slips in the production, so the tightness of the comedy is affected, reducing the sense of audience immersion that farce needs. 

The second main reason is that, by and large, it is rather indifferently acted. To put it bluntly, while some actors try too hard to deliver comedic “turns” and mug to the camera in flashes of tedious “business” (often campy), others honestly seem to be slightly out of their depth. Even the performers who don’t fall into these two camps are underwhelming, as if they couldn’t quite click with the production, or couldn’t find the right tone. It’s unclear exactly why this is, but some elements don’t quite make sense. For example, Ephesus is clearly a laid back kinda place (mime groups and courtesans clearly have a lot of influence, and its citizens are warm and friendly). Since it’s clearly an easy going town, why is its Antipholos so up-tight and angry all the time?

It’s a sign that things haven’t been quite thought through into a coherent whole. Some of this blame probably needs to lie with James Cellan Jones who, despite some interesting touches, doesn’t have a consistent idea for the tone of the play. Which is not to say that some of the ideas are not rather effective, and it’s clear he wants to put on a production of the play that is a little bit more than just a straight comedic farce. From the start, Jones never lets the audience forget that the play is framed around an old man being sentenced to death for a trite crime, and the decision to have Egeon continually wondering around the set between scenes, forlornly searching for relief works very well to keep bringing us back to the serious issues under the surface.

But other ideas don’t quite work. Although I can see that some people would really hate it, I actually rather enjoyed the mime group at the start miming out Egeon’s story as he narrates it. It adds some visual interest to what is otherwise a massive slab of text, even though the mime group set about their work with the shallow smugness of overpraised young children. The introduction of the Master of Mime as a character suggests that the group are going to “see through” all this business from the start and they will be real presences throughout the production. But then they completely disappear (aside from a few beats between scenes) from the action, have no influence on events (other than making some disturbance in the final scene to allow the Syracuse versions to escape) and offer no commentary or chorus function. It’s always, I think, rather damning of flourishes like this if they only work once in a production – if you can’t integrate it all the way through, you are better going without it.

Then we come into the main comedy scenes themselves. Stanley Wells makes a rather interesting point about the play in performance, that it serves the production better to have actors who are not identical as it should be immediately clear to the audience at all times which of the twins they are watching at any one time. This is categorically not the case here. This is less to do with the fact that Kitchen and Daltrey play both versions of the characters, and more to do with the fact that they are wearing identical costumes (in itself this makes little real sense) and that the personalities of the two twins are too close to each other. You do see some clear variations in the final sequences in characterisation when they appear together (and the split screen work to have them appear side-by-side actually works rather well considering) but it’s not enough to really make it clear. I was pretty confused at points, especially with the Dromios – and when the audience is as unclear about what is going on as the characters, then a farce doesn’t work.

Of the two main performances in this, Roger Daltrey does an amiable job and makes a decent fist of playing the role. I read another review which describes his performance as “amiably amateur” which is pretty much on the money. It’s not bad, but he fails to differentiate at all between the two Dromios and he delivers all the lines with too much of a “comedy” acting style, as little more than thick yokels, gurning through a series of events. This noticeably fails to make the “find out countries in her” exchange anywhere near as funny as it should be, with a lack of comic timing and skill in delivery. He’s clearly pleased to be there, impossible to dislike and does not embarrass himself but is not really good enough for the part.

Michael Kitchen does a serviceable job as the Antipholi, with Syracuse as a laid back fun loving kinda guy, who can’t believe his luck to have women throwing himself at him and has a playful relationship with his Dromio. His frequent direct addresses to the camera are playful and engagingly light in tone, making Syracuse an enjoyable companion for the audience. His Ephesus interestingly comes across as an uptight bastard, a bad husband and a man openly enjoying a series of affairs (as well as, it is hinted, a quiet awareness of his sister-in-law’s possible attraction to him) who takes a sub-Fawlty delight in slapping Dromio around. Two decent performances, but nothing really special.

The ladies in their lives are equally a mixed bag. Suzanne Bertish is probably a little too shrewish as Adriana, which then makes her coquettish hinting at sex being an after dinner treat for Syracuse slightly out of whack with the rest of her characterisation. She does however handle the longer speeches well, and there is a good sense of her pain and frustration at Ephesus’ obvious lack of faith and that her own anger stems from genuine feelings she has for him. She also gets some good moments of comic business, particularly when angrily preventing a Dromio from tidying away the contents of a table. Joanne Pearce though is flat out bad as Adriana, delivering her lines with a sing-song observance of the pentameter and failing to add any depth to the character – I suspect her simpering delivery is not meant to suggest she is having an affair with Antipholos of Ephesus, as I at first read it. Ingrid Pitts is embarrassingly oversexualised as the courtesan, Marsh Fitzalan makes no impression as Luce.

The older actors emerge slightly better. Charles Gray can of course now deliver this sort of thing standing on his head, and his Duke is a reasonable authority figure and humanitarian with the expected lecherous tone (very much Gray’s calling card now). Wendy Hiller adds an authority as Emilia (although the decision to accompany all her entrances with a Hallelujah chorus is as clunky as it sounds) as well as a touching sweetness. The acting honours of the production goes to Cyril Cusack as Egeon who not only brings a real depth of feeling and fatherly longing to his opening speech, but provides a large degree of emotion to the final scene – Egeon is probably the only character in the play that consistently works throughout and makes coherent sense.

The characters and acting are a mixed bag, but there are some nice touches here. As mentioned, several of the actors address the camera at key moments, which certainly makes some of the events more engaging, even if it doesn’t really help us understand them any better. Some of the small comedic performances and “near misses” work very well – in particular a moment at the end of A3 S2 when Antipholus of Ephesus witness his brother leaving his house and confusedly stares at the wine in his hand with a shake of the head – work very well, far better in fact than the overly played physical comedy (I’ve already mentioned the sub-Fawlty bashing of Dromio – never good to remind the viewers of far superior comedies than this).

The set itself is actually quite an impressive thing, playfully making no real attempt to present a “real world” instead reducing Ephesus to a carefully constructed single square, its floor made up of a wonderfully presented map of Greece, and bright primary colours dominating the surroundings and the buildings, giving the impression of an almost fairy tale background. How this ties in with the decisions around Egeon and the harking back to his sad state I’m less clear about – but it certainly makes the drama visually interesting. The split screen work to bring both sets of twins on screen at the same time is actually rather impressive considering the technical limitations of the time.

But the problem remains that I’m just not clear in the end exactly what sort of story is actually being told here. When it tries to be a comedy, it often goes for it far too much to actually be funny. When it focuses on the framing story, it never builds the mood enough to be actually moving. It’s a noble attempt at doing a farce with serious undertones on screen – but it just never clicks into place. Perhaps the core problem is that, deep down, this is too reverent to the text, willing to sacrifice the pace of the comedy to make sure that all the dialogue is delivered crystal clearly for the sponsors, as if the team were worried that to do anything less would be to insult the playwright.

The main problem is that all the stuff that works best is “televisual” and all the stuff that brings the film down is the “Shakespeare” stuff – and I think that is rooted in the fact that James Cellan Jones seems to lack real knowledge or experience with Shakespeare, making him uncertain how to play the dialogue or the plot. The camera flourishes work very well, and the idea he has about Egeon is good – but he basically seems to feel the actual dialogue is not going to be the source of any humour so never manages to bring any of it out of the performers. He then makes this worse, by instructing the actors to deliver it with clarity and respect rather than any comedic energy – a fatal flaw that holes the production beneath the waterline.

Conclusion
Some decent directorial flourishes and a few effective scenes and jokes basically get lost in what is overall probably a rather mediocre production – never outright bad, but often just slightly off beat, off tone or just missing being truly funny. With a lack of pace, too many scenes that outstay their welcome and a mixed bag of performances, where every good performer is matched by a sub-par one, this is a production that isn’t quite brave enough to cut loose from the text and really embrace making this comedy effective for film.


NEXT TIME: Tyler Butterworth and John Hudson are Two Gentlemen of Verona on the road for fun and romance.

No comments:

Post a Comment