A ship sails across the bay in the distance and we focus on the white glaring buildings of the Mediterranean town square of Ephesus. Eastern music invades our ears. The clean lines of the set designed by Peter McKintosh are functional and pleasing allowing actors and the audience’s senses to move about it with ease and without hindrance.

A jailer (Sean Buckley) brings a man before the Duke of Ephesus (David Carr). The dress is typical of the 1950’s, although the speech is Elizabethan. The shipwrecked man Egeon (Tony Osoba), a merchant of Syracuse, pleads for his freedom and he relates a story before being put in jail.

The man who wrote down this story to be conveyed by actors is a master of the English language and the play. It then needed a person of some skill to move this story forward in time and that man is Director Ian Brown. This play attributed to William Shakespeare is a breath of fresh air set in the hot still air of traditional theatre.

Two chancers descend on the town, Antipholus of Syracuse (Adam Shaw) and his man servant Dromio of Syracuse (Howard Saddler) who proceed to be mistaken for two established citizens Antipholus of Ephesus (Sean Francis) and his man servant Dromio of Ephesus (James Weaver) and thereby hangs the tale of mistaken identity and confusion. To relate the story would deprive viewers of the enjoyment of the jokes and intrigues so finely spoken and enacted by all the actors involved with this superb production of a Shakespearian epic.

Adriana (Lise Stevenson), the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, speaks of her marriage troubles with her sister Luciana (Alexandra Lilley) when the girls encounter the boys from Syracuse and confused attraction reigns. The confusion centres round a gold necklace being purchased from the local spiv, goldsmith Angelo (Peter Geddis), by Antipholus of Ephesus the husband of Adriana.

Bawdy comedy abounds giving this fine company ample scope to apply their skills as mental hospital attendants led by Doctor Pinch (Tony Osoba), a courtesan and Luce, servant of Adriana (Morag Siller) and Amelia, Abbess of Ephesus (Nicola Blackman).

Mistakes galore make for a comedy of errors and a feast of theatre. © BA

“The Comedy of Errors” is in Leeds from the 3rd of March until the 7th of April, 2001.