The Bard of the Dells

Critic Paul Gerard reviews the American Players Theatre revival of The Comedy of Errors. "Bring the kids," he urges, "it's the Shakespearean equivalent of the Wisconsin Dells." He praises the directors for grasping the adolescent nature of the work and for embracing its crude farce rather than hiding it "behind pretentious Bard-worship," and notes that the imaginative costumes and makeup render the settings akin to a Grecian Disneyland populated with townsfolk whose prosthetic faces make them "look like they just stumbled off the set of the latest Muppet movie." Thick with sentiment, Gerard writes, the performance "has more hugs than a disease-of-the-week TV show," though he acknowledges "a few instances of fine commedia-style physical comedy - particularly an entrance through a double door that would have made Buster Keaton proud."