Royal Conservatoire of
Scotland, Glasgow
Four stars
Beware, old-school
European passport holders attempting to travel to mythical Shakespearian versions
of neighbouring countries in the near future. As John McGeachie’s Syracusian
abroad Egeon discovers from the start when he goes in search of his two lost
boys in director Andy McGregor’s wildly irreverent take on one of the bard’s
earliest rom-coms, little Ephesus is a local town for local people. In a show performed
with unabashed glee by second-year BA Acting students, this doesn’t stop Speir
Sadivo’s piano playing Duke vamping like a maestro before granting him a
twenty-four hour pass to see who or what he can dig up.
Egeon’s two little boys,
meanwhile, both called Antipholus, and each with servants named Dromio in tow,
are clearly peas from the same pod. As
depicted by James Ripple and Adam Butler as the Antipholuses and Mabel Thomas
and Yolanda Mitchell as the Dromios, their identikit hipster looks causes all
manner of confusion, not least with Ellinor Larsson and Maria Laird’s sisters
Adrianna and Luciana.
Out of such nonsense and
shenanigans blossoms a junkyard pop musical remix, which takes seriously
liberal licence with Shaky’s original opus by way of a romp that pulls out all
the stops to get to its very happy end. The action is punctuated by
cartoon-strip style sound effects provided live by a cast who also play musical
instruments as they go, with Kirstyn Rodger’s set changing scene by way of
revolving blackboards.
Everyone onstage is
clearly having a ball, and there is much in the way of ad-libbing going on. The
propensities of Buckfast are explored by Antipholus of Ephesus when he comes a
cropper after starting up a potty-mouthed audience chant while attempting to
storm the nunnery. There is showboating galore too from Elena Redmond’s
tap-dancing Courtesan, while the perils of rampant snogging while wearing
lipstick is a lesson Marisa Bonnar, who plays Abbess Emilia, is unlikely to
forget in a show that looks suspiciously like a fringe smash hit in waiting.
The Herald, January 27th 2020
ends
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