During the rehearsal period, word got out that one of Blanche McIntyre’s actors had suffered minor injury in a bizarre cabbage-related incident. Now we can see how. As confusion escalates in the market square of Ephesus, with two sets of identical twins loose and each half-pair (so to speak) oblivious of the others, things start to get thrown. Foodstuffs, mainly: a lot of plastic fruit and veg, the odd fish… One of the poor Dromio twins (to be honest, I lost track of which one) gets a faceful of medium-sized octopus, and later on the other (or possibly the same one) has a plucked turkey jammed over his head.
    
The Comedy Of Errors may be the most Globe-friendly of Shakespeare’s plays in present-day terms. Something about the open-air venue encourages directors and companies to go large, and this contrived romp offers not just a plethora of opportunities but a pretty strong obligation to do so. McIntyre and company pack in physical business a-go-go. Even before the action proper begins, we are treated to an extended ladder routine as a Dromio (which one? – pass) tries to take down a clothes line strung high up under the stage canopy. And anachronism be damned: during a scene clean-up, two supernumeraries start galloping around on their brooms in a game of mock-Quidditch. When the mountebank Doctor Pinch turns up to treat two of the central quartet for madness, he leaps and gyrates like Bobby Farrell of Boney M throwing his most vigorous Ra-Ra-Rasputin shapes.
    
The physical side is delicious, but in her first Globe outing, McIntyre has yet to get the hang of the venue’s acoustics. It’s not simply a matter of shouting to get the lines to carry, and there is also a knack to “cheating” lower-velocity delivery. Surprisingly, the biggest disappointment in this respect is the company’s most experienced actor, James Laurenson, who plays Egeon as if he were in an indoor venue a third the size and untroubled by a flight path overhead. Still, there is comparatively little need to follow such subtleties as the play possesses, when you can simply luxuriate in the tribulations of Simon Harrison and Matthew Needham as the Antipholus twins, dressed not unlike the Knave of Hearts, and Brodie Ross and Jamie Wilkes as their put-upon Dromios. At one point they quite literally bring the house down.
    
Written for the Financial Times.