Review: A divine production of The Comedy of Errors

There’s no Shakespearean theatre quite like The Globe, especially when it comes to playing comedy. It is a bustling, interactive space where the audience really roars its appreciation when it is having a good time. And it definitely roared for The Globe’s production of The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare’s most ingenious, heart-warming and hilarious plays.

Now Oxford fans of the Bard can enjoy the performance – and its magic setting – from the comfort of a clutch of local cinemas. The production will be screened at the Ultimate Picture Palace, off Oxford’s Cowley Road, on Sunday before moving to the city’s Odeon and Vue cinemas on July 9.

The production’s director is Blanche McIntyre. She says: “It was my ambition to work at The Globe ever since it opened. I went to one of the first shows here when I was 19.”

Over the past few years she’s been building a steady reputation through the ranks of London’s fringe and studio theatres, culminating in winning the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

But coming to The Globe, as well as being the fulfilment of a long-time ambition, also meant she was reaching more people than ever before. “I realised at the first performance of The Comedy of Errors here that more people saw the show that night than most of my career put together until then. So it was a bit terrifying,” she admits.

Now the play is reaching even more of an audience via the cinema. She welcomes it, and the fact that a different director actually does the filming duty. “I have no cinema skills,” she admits. “I made one film and it was terrible. So it was good to have a fresh eye on it, which is just as good as mine and actually is probably better than mine.”

She’d previously worked with a touring Shakespearean company called Changeling Theatre, but apart from one Shakespeare play she directed as a student, The Globe job marked her Shakespearean directorial debut. How did it come about? “The Globe’s artistic director Dominic Dromgoole asked me if I had funny bones and if I could do a comedy. I said I could do it. Even though the play is quite tricky, I fell in love with it working on it. It’s just a wonderful piece of writing. But The Globe is a huge public space and very exposing. You have to give it full energy, but it is rewarded to infinity by the people who watch it. There’s nowhere to hide and the actors can see the faces of the people in the audience. That means that although it’s a play, there’s a lack of pretence.”

She approached the play “from the point of view of someone who has been an audience member there a lot – you listen very hard, you’re excited to be there, and you’re caught up in it – especially if you’re standing. Because I knew how exciting and seductive The Globe can be, I had to make sure that the play came across as powerfully as possible and engaged everyone as fully as it could. If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted an enormous gift, which is the goodwill of the audience.”

One of her leading actors Matthew Needham, who plays Antipholus of Ephesus, said: “Places like The Globe have a responsibility to take their work to places. The Globe tours all over the place, but there are some places we can’t get to so the films are a great way of sharing our work.”

* The Comedy of Errors is at The Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford on June 27, and the Odeon, George Street and Vue Oxford on July 9. Book at onscreen.shakespearesglobe.com/