The Comedy of Errors @ The King’s Theatre

Hot on the heels o f The EUSC’s production of a Midsumer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors is just one of the King’s Theatre’s back-to-back Shakespeare line ups. Incorporating a completely male cast, the Propeller production was always going to be reassuringly different. In a clash of ravenously eccentric characters and an explosion of blunders, the show is a comedy of the absurd – and of brilliance. In a funfair of humour and colour and a circus of noise, errors clash against errors in a grown-up tantrum of intelligence.

On stage, you are only as good as your performance and it would seem that this is something that the cast know and use as their benchmark. As they choose to specialise in the works of one of the world’s greatest playwrights, their possessive passion for his work is certain. But the company’s forte does not exclusively rest in its rapture for Shakespeare; it also lies in the confidence that it has in its audience.

Instead of scaling a production down into bite-size pieces it chooses to remain faithful to its audiences’ intellect and in doing so, makes them curious for more. Another speciality is the company’s ability to match flamboyant sharp-witted movement with an equally flamboyant text and somehow, make it work without question.

It isn’t very often that you find yourself smiling through an entire show, but tonight, I have to hold my hands up. As the cast exploit their characters’ and use of space to the extreme, not a moment of the audience’s time has been spent in vain. And as the cast also take on Richard III in the same week, it would seem that the company’s time in Edinburgh is not being wasted either.