The Comedy of Errors
By William Shakespeare
Ludlow Brewery
June/ July 2014
Our first Ludlow production exceeded all expectations with the response from the Shakespeare-loving people of Ludlow, and the Brewery proved to be a superb and popular venue. Setting the play in current day Ludlow, the references were appreciated - pink trousered gentlemen, ladies who lunch, country lads and a butcher; together with a guest appearance by Sooty from the castle festival!
“Slick, professional, very funny; Shakespeare as it should be. Encore!”
Audience member
“The production balanced the farce, the pantomime, the serious and the potentially dangerous with professionalism and panache; it was a romp and a riot from start to finish — but it was always, always, Shakespeare and if the Bard was turning in his grave, it will have been through laughter.”
Diane Lyle
Cast & Crew
Duke/ Courtesan - Charmian Ingham
Egeon/ Pinch - Nic Walentowicz
Antipholus of Syracuse - Simon Bolton
Antipholus of Ephesus - Paul Sayers
Dromio of Syracuse - David Scotswood
Dromio of Ephesus - Alex Curry
Adriana - Eleanor Painter
Luciana - Breanne-Shaye Burton
Angelo - Morgan Rees-Davies
Balthasar/ Second Merchant - Frances-Clare Lothian
First Merchant/ Officer - Jayne Hall
Abbess - Samantha Cole
Director - Simon Bolton
Producer/ Assistant Director - Paul Sayers
Music - Steve Dunachie
Front of House Manager - Carmel Wilson
Review
“Ludlow Brewery, an increasingly popular venue for a wide variety of events, played host to Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors as part of this year's Ludlow Fringe Festival — and what fun it was!
Rooftop Theatre Company, clearly no novice, presented this romping comedy with a small cast of professionally trained and really talented amateur actors, mostly local, which included identical Jack Russell dogs just to inject a little more hilarity and confusion.
The story, one of Shakespeare's early comedies, is a knotty farce of two pairs of identical twins, separated through a storm at sea, who unknowingly find themselves in the same town and thus the romp begins.
There's Antipholus of Syracuse (played by Simon Bolton) and Antipholus of Ephesus (played by Paul Sayers) and Dromio of Syracuse (played by David Scotswood) and Dromio of Ephesus (played by Johnny Ostle) .... Ephesus A and D are established and married and part of the humour is where husbands are mistook (deliberate pun on words here), watching the 'wrong' Antipholus extricate himself from the demands of a wife (Adriana, played by Eleanor Painter) he didn't know he had and the deteriorating relationships between wrong masters and wrong servants — all of which only the audience knows the truth.....
The supporting cast (Jack Russells included) did just that — supported the main characters but added so much individual characterisation: Nic Walentowicz as a credible broken‐hearted Egeon searching for his lost sons and wife, and, light heartedly ridiculing the main festival events in Ludlow Castle, as a Sooty‐puppet sporting Doctor Pinch; Morgan Rees‐Davies such a believable and hilarious Angelo; Frances‐Clare Lothian as Balthasar; the ineffectual PC played by Jayne Hall; Samantha Cole whose appearance as the Abbess will for ever now be inseparable from Maria in The Sound of Music and Breanne‐Shaye Burton who played Luciana, Adriana's less‐than‐sympathetic sister, with a maturity of expression and comedy beyond her years.
The production balanced the farce, the pantomime, the serious and the potentially dangerous with professionalism and panache; it was a romp and a riot from start to finish — but it was always, always, Shakespeare and if the Bard was turning in his grave, it will have been through laughter.”
Diane Lyle