Sean Holmes is associate artistic director at the Globe and there’s a lightness and ease about his Shakespeare productions that’s not to be scoffed at. The props and costumes here, wittily designed by Paul Wills, have just the right amount of pizazz to raise a chuckle (who knew a gold chain could be genuinely funny?). The audience interaction reels us in without overdoing it and the actors seem comfortable with the text, happy to embellish the Bard’s dialogue with their own distinctive comic gifts.
The context remains relatively untouched yet the show feels contemporary – largely down to a sort of droll knowingness that runs through the ensemble, with lines like, “Well, this is strange!”, cutting through the complex plot with amusingly glib efficiency. We’re still in the rather strange city of Ephesus, where Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio have come to seek out their long-lost twin brothers. Antipholus’s estranged parents also happen to be in town and – you guessed it – endless incidents of mistaken identity ensue.
