What do you get when you mix Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” with show tunes?
“The Boys from Syracuse,” presented by Taylor’s musical theatre troupe, April 23-26.
Hailed as the first Shakespearean play to be adapted into a musical, this farce musical is a vibrant telling of two sets of twins and the antics that ensue when they share names and do not know one another.
“In true Shakespearean comedy, the plot centers around a series of miscommunications, misidentity,” Gavin Kastner, a senior musical theatre major and actor for Antipholus of Ephesus, said. “It’s just a big hullabaloo of miscommunications and misdirections.”
True to the musical’s label as farce, the actors exaggerated their motions, reactions and emotions to elicit laughter and gasps from their audience.
Following “The Glass Menagerie,” “Shrek the Musical” and “Eurydice” earlier in the theater season, “The Boys from Syracuse” offers a different experience for both the actors and the audience, Mary Kathryn Brewer, professor of music and director of “The Boys from Syracuse,” said.
This variety is intentional and it will continue next year, she said.
This season has included comedic performances and more serious shows with comedy woven in. Yet, “The Boys from Syracuse” stands out because it takes the inner problems from the other shows and expands them tenfold, and it is comedic while doing so, Kastner said.
“It’s meant to be a farce, it’s meant to be funny, it’s meant to poke fun, that’s what this show is,” Brewer said, “but there’s truth in human connection, there’s truth in reconciliation and finding part of yourself and finding your group of people that you can be yourself with. That’s all true.”
The Holy Spirit directs each audience member to draw what they need to from a performance, Brewer said. In this instance, she was led to the conclusion that the story is one of relationships and loving one another in spite of flaws and mistakes.
Similarly, Kastner said there is not always an explicit message, so his approach to storytelling is to tell the story and then leave it to the audience to draw what they need from it. To him, “The Boys from Syracuse” includes messages about not judging others for their background or factors in their life that may be uncontrollable.
Even so, he emphasized that the focus should be on the comedy for this show.
“There’s just so much going on, so much to look at and laugh at, that the primary emotion in that moment should be joy, and maybe some of the messages can come later,” Kastner said. “There’s no need or expectation for anybody to sit in those seats and try to analyze the deep inner philosophical meanings of this text, but really just experience it for what it is, which is this big, massive, crazy world with these crazy characters.”
This wild production was only possible because of the contributions of many groups of people, Brewer said.
Students were responsible for the hand-painted stage, hand-made props, period-appropriate costumes and elaborate wig designs. The actors rose to the challenge of learning a plethora of songs and dances of varying styles accompanied by the orchestra, who set the tone throughout the musical.
“This production is really a group effort,” Brewer said. “I think that that’s a really beautiful thing, to see how much of the student crew you see have gone into the creation of this in ways that aren’t necessarily known when you are first watching it.”
There will be more performances demonstrating the prowess of Taylor’s theatre performers in the forthcoming season, so stay tuned for the chance of more show tunes, comedy and emotional impact.
