A comedy that has had audiences laughing for centuries is finding new life with Taylor Theatre’s production of “The Boys from Syracuse.”
The show will run in Mitchell Theatre April 23-26. It is a 1938 musical adapted by George Abott with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. The musical is based on Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.”
The musical is a madcap musical farce, focusing on two sets of twins who find themselves mixed up in each other’s lives as well as the comedic events that ensue.
“This style of farce is all about things going wrong,” Hannah Wylie, a senior theatre and English education major and the assistant director and intimacy coordinator, said. “There’s this whole farce comedy of who’s who and what’s what, and trying to figure out what’s going on, and people fall in love and people get angry and make up.”
Everyone is focused on their own agenda, Kaitlyn Hamilton, a freshman computer science major and the stage manager, said.
Every character sees themself as the center of the world and acts accordingly, she said. The musical has an urgency as each character recklessly chases after their goal.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Hamilton said. “I remember the first time I read through and I just was laughing the entire time.”
“The Boys from Syracuse” also explores themes of acceptance of those who are different, Wylie said. Even though the sets of twins hail from warring countries, they find they are not so different after all.
The musical’s theme of loving one another connects to Christians’ biblical call to love their neighbors, she said.
“Our neighbor doesn’t just look like the person sitting next to us, who we’ve known our whole lives,” Wylie said. “Our neighbor is even the person from Syracuse or the person from some country that we’re not familiar with.”
Audiences have been experiencing the story of “The Boys from Syracuse” for years, Selah Grannis, a junior musical theatre major, playing the character Luce, said.
Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” was based on an ancient Roman play called “Menaechmi” by Plautus, which involved comedic confusion when long-lost separated twins ended up in the same city. Audiences in 2026 still enjoy “The Boys from Syracuse” despite the inspiration for its plot dating back to the second century BCE.
“I just think that’s so interesting that humans back in ancient Greece were like, ‘It’s really funny that they’re mixing up those two twins,’ and us now, we’re sitting around like, ‘It’s really funny that they don’t know that it’s the other twin,’” Grannis said.
Productions of “The Boys from Syracuse” are relatively rare, Mary Kathryn Brewer, assistant professor of music and the director, said.
Taylor Theatre’s performance offers a unique opportunity for audiences to experience classic musical comedy, she said.
“I really hope the audience will be able to laugh,” Brewer said. “They will find it comical. They will see a little bit of themselves in some of our characters, in the mistakes they make, and in their flaws, that we’ll be able to sort of hold a mirror up and they’ll be able to laugh at themselves and us.”
The Taylor Theatre invites students, faculty and friends to experience the show. Tickets will be available online or at the box office.
