For the genteel 21st-century theatregoer, it is all too easy to forget that, in Shakespeare's day, comedy was a raucous, often bawdy, sometimes downright vulgar affair.
To his credit, Gordon Barr, artistic director of Glasgow's annual Bard In The Botanics festival understands that the Elizabethans didn't go to a comedy to simply smile wryly at the wit. Consequently, his outdoor staging of The Comedy Of Errors is as rough-and-ready a production as one is likely to see.
Ignorant of their identical twins, the gentlemen Antipholus and their manservants Dromio (hailing from Ephesus and Syracuse) lead us headlong into a series of hilarious errors. Adding grist to the comic mill, Barr leaves behind attic Greece and Italy, preferring, with a light-hearted nod to September's referendum, a cartoonishly Scottish Ephesus, resplendent in garish plaid, a bunch of English Syracusians, and some over-the-top Americans for good measure.
What ensues is Shakespeare as high-energy, musical farce. Often played at breakneck speed, the production owes as much to the slapstick violence of Vic Reeves and the 1970s sauciness of Benny Hill as to anything of the Bard's invention; indeed, no sooner does one think, "they might as well use the Benny Hill theme tune", than the cast, including Flora Sowerby's short skirted, soft porn cop, are running around as Hill's signature music is played on kazoos.
Occasionally one feels that some members of the cast lack the full set of skills required to play comedy at this speed. However, the momentary lapses are easily forgiven when one considers the inventiveness of Kirk Bagé's conjuror Dr Pinch, who is reinvented as a self-aggrandising American TV evangelist in a lurid suit.
There are fine, comically exaggerated performances across the cast, not least by all four of the doppelgangers (Tom Duncan and James Ronan as the Antipholuses, and David James Kirkwood and Robert Elkin as the Dromios). Wearing its referendum politics very lightly indeed, this Comedy Of Errors makes up in confident daftness anything it might lose in subtlety.
If Barr's production is something of a rough diamond, there is, as one might expect, a great deal more professional polish to be found in Pitlochry Festival Theatre's new comic musical, Whisky Kisses. Created by Euan Martin, Dave Smith and James Bryce for Cameron MacKintosh's Highland Quest For A Musical, which culminated in 2007, the show follows the fate of the oldest bottle of the Glenigma, reputed to be one of the greatest Scotch whiskies in the world.
The Highland distillery has fallen on hard times, thanks to the gambling debts of its former owner, and now his daughter, Mary McGregor (played charmingly by Mairi Morrison), is auctioning the great bottle in order to provide some sort of redundancy package for her soon-to-be-unemployed staff. What follows is an unapologetically romantic tale in which the arrival in the glen of two wealthy collectors from America and Japan becomes a spiritual journey of discovery for everyone involved.
Sadly, the opening, appropriately Broadway-style song, Got To Have It, turns out to be the most memorable in the show. More worryingly still, besides Morrison (when she's signing in Gaelic) and Scott Armstrong (as Munro's assistant), few members of the cast could be properly classified as singers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article