Comedy is separated at mirth

I am afraid I have rigid ideas about this early Shakespearian comedy of confused identities. I find the humour forced to the point of heavy labour. I long for it to be interpreted in a style emphasising the sinister aspects, those emotional undercurrents of bewilderment and fantasy, anxiety and strangeness, rather than the slapstick farce that characterises the surface action.

Nancy Meckler's production, applauded for its imaginative conception and farcical zest by most critics at the Stratford-upon-Avon premiere last summer, strikes me as having squandered its theatrical potential and surrendered to the easy option of constantly trying to nudge the audience's funny bone.

The director's vivid scene-setting raises strong expectations. Meckler encloses the play in a suitable, half-Victorian dream world, which is a cross between a fancy-dress party and a carnival, decorated with puppeteers, a skeleton and small band, not to mention mountebanks and policemen in scarlet top hats.

Katrina Lindsay's lovely design envelops the stage in billowing clouds of white sails or a canopy, and the sounds of sea, one of whose storms separated the identical Antipholus twin babes and the two identical Dromios, are never far away.

Joe Dixon's Antipholus of Syracuse, arriving in town only to find himself treated as if his identity had been stolen and he had been given a mysterious new one, strikes just the right note of bemused wonder and goes on striking it when he should be developing signs of panic. His Ephesus twin, the almost lookalike Christopher Colquhoun, meanwhile, maintains the air of a suave man about town.

The farcical pile-up, to which Forbes Masson and Jonathan Slinger, in flared-up orange quiffs as the Dromio servants, contribute, goes fast, furious and mainly unfunny until an abruptly poignant finale when those separated delight in reunion.

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The Comedy Of Errors