If you like your Shake speare genteel and stiff-upper-lipped, stay away from “The Comedy of Errors” at BAM.
But if a Latin-lover cop and a nunchuk-wielding spinster delivering the Bard’s poetry don’t faze you, get a ticket, stat. The UK’s Propeller company and director Edward Hall have delivered the bawdiest, smartest, funniest, most outrageously alive Shakespeare in ages.
Hall and his all-male troupe have built their reputation with concept-heavy stagings such as “Rose Rage” (“Henry VI” with buckets of actual meat as props) and a “Merchant of Venice” set in a prison.
Now they’re tackling “The Comedy of Errors,” which boasts one of the nuttier plots in the canon. Let’s just say it involves two sets of long-separated identical twins who become mixed up in a series of credibility-defying co-
incidences and hackneyed misunderstandings.
Hall’s set the show in a tropical resort for vacationing Brits, complete with a mariachi-like band decked out in soccer jerseys and an ’80s vibe — two of the twins sport smiley-face T-shirts and hideous mullets.
This approach could easily go off the rails, but the superlative ensemble executes it with laser-sharp precision and an obvious relish for the play’s zany excesses.
This “Comedy of Errors” is a jam-packed, lightning-paced feast for the senses in which every detail has been lovingly polished. Entrances are particularly fabulous: Aemilia, the Abbess, sashays in purple go-go boots, waving a riding crop. Dr. Pinch — a conjurer who somehow becomes a preacher here — storms onstage belting a rousing gospel number, and mock-innocently drops a reference to Sarah Palin.
Even the most innocuous lines inspire irresistible, blink-and-you-miss-it sight gags — when a twin refers to “silks” a tailor has bought him, someone brandishes a garish man-thong.
But what’s most striking is that we never lose sense of the text itself. While they go from punch line to pratfall at breakneck speed, the actors manage to polish every word, slyly underlining the play’s power and sexual dynamics. Under the show’s brash, irreverent exterior beats a true Shakespearean heart.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com