The all male cast of the Propeller theatre company brought their version of The Comedy of Errors to the Theatre Royal in Norwich. A farce by William Shakespeare using two sets of twins separated at birth and the mishaps that occur when they meet up in a series of coincidences throughout the city bringing in a wife, goldsmith, a merchant and an abbess. Propeller have two main aims, the first is being faithful to the text and the second is having a fairly minimalist set with most people on stage in some role at some point (this year it was mainly as Mexican tourists!). All of the cast also play a musical instrument that is used to emphasis words or phrases in the script.
In review it was a bit uneven. Some bits of it were really funny and some of the modern additions to the script and set really worked however some of the lines were delivered so quickly that the became incomprehensible and despite the nature of the farce some of it was too manic and some of the themes that they wanted us to get did not really work. An example of this was a lunatic who is supposed to cure other lunatics portrayed as a US TV evangelist who ended up running through the audience naked with a sparkler in his bum!
At the end the cast came on stage to do a question and audience which was quite interesting and in the break came into the foyer at the interval to do a concert in aid of Save the Children so fair to the cast for being good sports.
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