Lights, color – action!
Color indeed played a leading role in BGSU’s Department of Theatre and Film’s presentation of William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.
Adding vivid colors was only one of the exciting features added by director Dr. F. Scott Regan.
Regan is a respected professor who has been at BGSU since 1982. He has directed over 90 plays in his lifetime, but this is the first time he has ever directed Comedy of Errors.
“We try to do a Shakespeare play every three to four years,” said Regan. He realizes that The Comedy of Errors is usually not a favorite play to most Shakespearean fans therefore he has made adaptations to the script so that audiences will enjoy the play and even relate to it.
Though the play is comedy, it involves serious issues such as violence and death.
Throughout the play, hippies are on stage encouraging peace. At one point, the duke calls upon the National Guards to raise their guns and a hippie approaches a guard and places a flower in the barrel of his gun. This scene was added by Regan who recognizes that this is a popular sign of peace and wants his audience to “everyday, give peace a chance.”
Another message Regan is revealing in the play is a response to President Bush’s recent comment that protesting the war in Iraq is unpatriotic. Regan’s hippie characters who protest violence is Regan’s way of telling the audience that encouraging peace is not unpatriotic but nobel.
All seriousness aside, consistent laughter from the audience will be inevitable.
The plot entails two sets of twin brothers who have never met, unaware that they even have a twin, and all wind up in the city of Ephesus. Each character becomes buried in confusion and several ‘errors’ occur because everyone is mistaking one set of twins for the other.
“I thought it was interesting. One thing I was defiantly catching onto was that the confusion of the show defiantly lends itself well to the placement of the 1960s,” said Alexis Snyder, House Manager.
The two sets of twins are played by David Lehr, Tyler Ward, Ryan Zarecki and Jason P. Suel
Lehr and Ward both play Antipholus. Lehr plays Antipholus of Ephesus and Ward plays Antipholus of Syracuse. They both play convincing roles and couldn’t have controlled the play’s confusion better if they were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
Zarecki and Sual both play Dromio. Zarecki, you may recognize from September’s All My Sons, plays Dromio of Ephesus and Suel plays Dromio of Syracuse. These characters represent the true humor of the play. Both Dromios are goofy, geeky and give off a humorous Screech Powers demeanor.
Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse are visiting Ephesus and are disturbed and shocked at their odd welcome.
Regan asks his audience to, “Imagine if you left Bowling Green, Ohio in 1968, arrived in San Francisco and were greeted as if you had lived there all your life.”
Sound Effects Operator, Stephanie Ford, has seen the play during rehearsal many times.
“I laugh more every time I see it,” said Ford.
The Comedy of Errors opened last night to a sold out audience. Plenty of tickets are still available for the shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $10 for students, senior citizens and other adults, $5 for children under twelve. They can be reserved by calling the box office at 2-2719.
