CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
The Comedy of Errors. By William Shakespeare. (Royal Court.) THE Group Theatre has waved a wicked wand over the farce and translated it into " a diversion in the Edwardian manner " ; and in an Ephesus that pulls together into a single exotic absurdity the seaports of southern France, Italy, and the Levant, the Roman knots of the plot are tied and untied, as they should be, in full view of the audience. There is a cuckoo to taunt suspicious husbands, a clock whose hands obligingly and automatically adjust themselves on the instant to the demands of the players, and the company is puffed out with such new recruits (street photographers and sellers of postcards) as the author might indeed have welcomed, for all we know, had he been available himself to knock his play forward into the era of top hat, tight trousers, sweeping moustaches, and suggestive champagne advertisements. The farce is taken at full tilt (with a single interval to get the breath back) and the final sorting out of Antipholuses and Dromios (mashers and smart alecs) is celebrated with a grand galop to a rousing tune. It is odd to notice how, in the middle of such fun and games, the lines of /Egeon (Cecil Winter) can retain their moving qualities. Mr. Ernest Milton makes a befezzed magnifico of Solinus ; Antipholus of Ephesus is played by Donald Eccles, his twin of Syracuse by John van Eyssen, both with energy and all proper exaggeration ; the Dromios are Jeremy Geidt and John Garley ; and a small but heartfelt cheer may be given for the appearance of Dorinne Symonds as Adriana's cook—a *ondrous, monumental, Lautrecian apparition.
LAIN HAMILTON.
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