Theater Of Others To Stage Shakespeare's THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Theater of Others is producing their twelfth show, William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, October 5-21. Lijesh Krishnan directs a cast of 13, with costumes by Lisa Claybaugh, at the Theater of Others' home, the Kelly Cullen Community Auditorium, 220 Golden Gate Avenue (between Leavenworth and Hyde) in San Francisco. The Comedy of Errors runs Thursdays through Sundays, October 5-21. As with all Theater of Others' productions, admission is Pay-What-You-Will. The Civic Center BART Station is three blocks from the theater.

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humor coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It has been adapted for opera, stage, and screen numerous times worldwide. Once again, Shakespeare has coined a phrase that has remained in common use ever since the 16th Century - "comedy of errors" being only one of scores of examples found in the English language.

The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins who were accidentally separated at birth. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and false accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession. In the end, all is straightened out, and to echo the title of another of the Bard's plays, "all's well that ends well."

The play has been adapted as a musical at least three times, first as The Boys from Syracuse, which opened on Broadway in November 1938 with a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.