Shakespeare Is Back On Newtown Stage Beginning This Weekend

The Comedy of Errors, which opens at The Little Theatre in Newtown on July 6, will be the Town Players’ fourth foray into the comic world of Shakespeare.

Comedy of Errors, the Bard’s first comedy, is as close as Shakespeare ever came to pure farce: it is driven by the youthful exuberance of its characters and its author through a minefield of mistaken identity, near-disaster, and general confusion to a happy ending. Witty interchanges alternate with high poetry and low slapstick to offer something for everyone in the audience.

Five Newtown actors are featured in the cast of 23: Chris Bassett plays the proud goldsmith Angelo; Kathleen Mooney is the naive but fervent Luciana; Keegan Finlayson runs up and down the social scale to play the Duke of Ephesus and a singing street vendor; Janine Pixley portrays the practical-minded Courtesan; and Beth English sings, dances and plays the Messenger.

Other actors from the greater Newtown area include Matthieu Regney and Daryl Howell, both of Danbury, who support the production in the secondary but essential roles of Jailer and Second Merchant (one of a quartet of merchants who carry a note of commercialism through the play).

Rob Pawlikowski of Roxbury (formerly of Sandy Hook) plays the difficult and pivotal role of Egeon, a merchant who has jeopardized his own life to seek his lost sons. Aaron Kaplan of Bethel plays Antipholus of Syracuse, desperately seeking his long-lost twin brother but completely oblivious to the signs of success when total strangers seem to know him well; and Marianne O’Shaughnessy, also of Bethel, plays several smaller roles.

Other members of the cast familiar to Town Players audiences include Mark Frattaroli of Stratford as Antipholus of Ephesus, Leslie Van Etten Broatch of Milford as one of the Dromios, Lucy Babbitt of Stratford as the distressed wife of Antipholus of Ephesus (come to the play just to hear people say that fast!); George Lang as the manic schoolmaster-cum-exorcist Doctor Pinch; Joanne Stanley of Bridgeport lends her strong comic talents to the role of Luce, the gross but lusty kitchen wench, and Mike Stanley plays Balthazar, a courtesy-conscious merchant.

According to the story, based on a Roman comedy by Plautus, the city of Ephesus has, as a result of a merchants’ war, banned all visitors from Syracuse, but the hapless Egeon of Syracuse has nevertheless come there in search of one of his sons and the son’s slave. Sentenced to death if he cannot raise a ransom by sunset, he tells the sad story of the loss of his other (twin) son and the slave’s twin some 25 years earlier in a storm at sea.

What he does not know is that both his sons — and both their slaves — are at that moment in Ephesus also, one pair as seekers and one as life-long residents. Although the play is essentially farce, it was also Shakespeare’s first experiment with a theme he was to revisit again and again: identity. The characters are presented repeatedly with the question of who they really are as the comedy of doubles reels on its merry way, characters dashing madly about only to meet themselves head-on, to the delight of the knowing audience.

Students of Shakespeare will also find in this play “first drafts” of stage devices he worked with again in later plays: twins, missed messages, family reunions, lunacy, and the juxtaposition of pratfalls and other physical comedy cheek by jowl with romance and poetry. He also could not resist, even in this light play, introducing the fact of mortality, the possibility that every comedy can with a wrong step turn tragic. But he never returned to quite this level of farce.

Alexander Kulcsar has designed the set for Comedy of Errors, creating a suggestion of the ancient and busy harbor city of Ephesus. Pam Sweat of Newtown is producer of the play. Assisting the director are Leonia Python, dancing master for the Italian Renaissance dance that opens the show, and Chris Bassett, music master for incidental songs.

Ruth Anne Baumgartner has previously directed for the Town Players of Newtown. She handled As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, as well as Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, and, last season, her own Revenge Tragedy: A Comedy.

The Comedy of Errors will open July 6 at the Little Theatre, Orchard Hill Road (off Route 25) in Newtown. The production will continue on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 pm through July 28, with one Sunday matinee on July 22 at 2 pm. Tickets are $10 each, with all seating general admission.

For reservations or directions, call 270-9144.