{"id":26002,"date":"2014-06-30T13:24:49","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=26002"},"modified":"2019-02-25T19:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T01:07:03","slug":"mining-for-gold-utah-shakespeare-festivals-the-comedy-of-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/mining-for-gold-utah-shakespeare-festivals-the-comedy-of-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining for Gold: Utah Shakespeare Festival’s The Comedy of Errors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A scene from the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s 2014 production of The Comedy of Errors. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2014.)<\/p><\/div>\n

This year, unsuspecting visitors to the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s Adams Theatre may be startled to find Vicki M. Smith\u2019s playful stage set, which looks more appropriate for a theatrical production of Blazing Saddles<\/i> than an Elizabethan comedy: because at the 2014 Festival, Brad Carroll\u2019s staging of Shakespeare\u2019s The Comedy of Errors<\/i> becomes a wild west romp that tumbles headlong into the mischief that ensues from mistaken identity.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s early play is a fairly straightforward comedy, the story of two sets of twins (masters and servants), separated during a shipwreck while young and ultimately reunited as adults. After the shipwreck, Antipholus and his servant Dromio establish themselves in Ephesus, where, as the play begins, Antipholus is a well-respected merchant. When the long lost brothers of both master and servant \u2014 also named Antipholus and Dromio \u2014 arrive in town, classic Shakespearean farce ensues as wives and merchants, prostitutes and nuns all take one brother for the other.<\/p>\n

One of Shakespeare\u2019s earlier plays, The Comedy of Errors<\/i> is also one of his shortest. But Carroll, with his inspired cast, takes full advantage of the available white space on the page to fill the stage with slapstick humor and mayhem.\u00a0 In the hands of this energetic crew (which enjoyed every minute of the opening night fun), the play adapts surprisingly well to its tumbleweed setting. The steel of a Shakespearean swordfight become pistols in an unwieldy shootout; a silver star transforms the all-powerful Duke of Shakespeare\u2019s text into a swaggering, square-jawed sheriff; and the various townspeople \u2014 merchants, courtesans, constables \u2014 are morphed into a variety of wild west stereotypes. Cassandra Bissell and Eva Balistieri transform Shakespeare\u2019s Adriana and Luciana into two versions of the southern belle: the wonderfully overheated Bissell is a fiery and passionate redhead, while Balistieri plays her sister as a curly blonde profile in retiring, sweet humility. The twangs and drawls of the cast are all over the dime-store spectrum, but the best comes from the full-throated, ACT V-delivery of Kathleen Brady\u2019s shotgun-toting Abbess (who turns out to be mother to the Anthipholuses). Chris Amos and Drew Shirley do a wonderful job as the confused and frequently exasperated Antipholuses, but like two desperadoes running away with a bank haul, the two Dromios, Aaron Galligan-Stierle and Misha Fistensky, steal the show \u2014 especially Galligan-Stierle, who played his Syracusian Dromio with such gusto, he made even his costar burst with laughter.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare stays alive for us because he is constantly reinterpreted by new generations (also, well, because the words are just fabulous). His historical plays and tragedies are frequently adapted to other historical time periods \u2014 the age of fascism plays particularly well to his stories of tyrants \u2014 but it is less common to see his comedies so transformed. Carroll\u2019s decision to place Ephesus among the tumbleweeds \u2014 the result of artist directors Brian Vaughn and David Ivers\u2019 invitation to \u201cthink outside the box\u201d \u2014 mines this comedy for plenty of comic gold and very few errors.<\/p>\n

The Utah Shakespeare Festival’s<\/a> 2014 Summer Season includes The Comedy of Errors, Henry IV Part One, Measure for Measure, <\/em>and Twelfth Night, <\/em>running through October 18; as well as Sense and Sensibility <\/em>and Into The Woods<\/em> which run through August 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year, unsuspecting visitors to the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s Adams Theatre may be startled to find Vicki M. Smith\u2019s playful stage set, which looks more appropriate for a theatrical production of Blazing Saddles than an Elizabethan comedy: because at the 2014 Festival, Brad Carroll\u2019s staging of Shakespeare\u2019s The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36],"tags":[2004,1368,2002,2006,2007,2003,2001,2005,276],"class_list":["post-26002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","category-theatre","tag-aaron-galligan-stierle","tag-brad-carroll","tag-cassandra-bissell","tag-chris-amos","tag-drew-shirley","tag-eva-balistieri","tag-kathleen-brady","tag-mish-fistensky","tag-utah-shakespeare-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/DComedy-8935.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 19:22:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26002"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41139,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26002\/revisions\/41139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}