Bard at his most hip

A bald bimbette in a blonde wig proves the unexpected highlight of a rap version of The Comedy of Errors, which smashes through Shakespeare's iambic pentameters and replaces them with the rhythms of the street.

One of two hip-hop versions of the play to open in London coincidentally on the same night, The Bombitty of Errors provides a rush of giddy wordplay that updates the Bard's more flabby terminology so that it has the rapidity, rhythm and relentlessness of machine-gun fire.

As Mark Rylance launches a season at the Globe dominated by single-sex casting, the Bomb-itty is amiable proof that four men and a little make-up can easily conjure up an entire manic world. Written by four former students - Jordan Allen-Dutton, GQ, Erik Weiner, Jason Catalano - from New York University with music by DJ JAQ, it proved a surprise hit in America, where the ingenuity of their visual and verbal jokes embraced a trisexual policeman and a Mother Superior with a very large baseball cap.

Inevitably the show's tone and restless pulse means that few pensioncollectors will be in the audience, yet those tempted to indulge in a snobbish fit about the juvenile levels of some of the wit should remember how low Shakespeare sank in the original - not least in a joke involving Ireland and buttocks.

If there is a genuine complaint about Bomb-itty, it is that it is so unremittingly loud and unvaried rhythmically - but this would be far more of a problem without the lightning humour and exhilaratingly sparky performances including Chris Edwards as a knowingly coy Luciana, or Ranney [sic] managing to play both Adriana and her husband Antipholus of Ephesus in a surprisingly convincing clinch.

A more raucous and laid-back take on Shakespeare's tale of two pairs of twins separated in a storm at sea has also started at Stratford East, in Da Boyz. Based loosely on Rodgers and Hart's The Boys from Syracuse, it begins like a hip-hop concert and ends like the Jerry Springer show, as the main characters scream at each other to explain both the marital and genetic confusion.

Directed by Ultz, this does not match Bomb-itty for textual cleverness, shining instead through hip-hop dance routines where performers seem to use joints that more sedentary people never discover. Two screens either side of the stage display comic interludes as if each scene were written for a double-act, while feelings of love, hate and confusion are blown up into major crowd-stirring numbers.

The final result is not so much like a show as a well-organised party, where Shakespeare has only been admitted as a wallflower. Those seeking the Bard at his most hip would do best to head to the New Ambassadors.

Bomb-itty of Errors is booking to 12 July. Box office: 020 7369 1761. Da Boyz is on until 31 May. Box office: 020 8534 0310.

The Bomb-Itty Of Errors