You sit in front of the television, clicker in hand, aimlessly flipping through the channels. "Gilligan's Island," "The Three Stooges," pirate epic, variety show, soap opera, mob movie, game show, religious program, PBS arts programming
This is the humorous effect of the Company Rep production of "The Comedy of Errors," which treats Shakespeare's play as a series of fast-moving comic sketches that pop out of a giant TV screen. Conceived and crafted by director Hope Alexander, the presentation mirrors today's restless, attention-deficit culture while slyly suggesting that if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing at least part time for Hollywood.
An early Shakespeare comedy, "Errors" stands up well to such tampering. It's really just a comic romp to begin with, modeled after Roman comedies involving twins separated in youth who end up in the same place years later, causing much confusion.
Alexander compresses the script to an intermissionless 90 minutes and keeps the stage abuzz with comic complications arising from people's inability to distinguish between twin servants (Brandon Ford Green and Stephen Brewster) and their twin masters (Joe Garcia and John Edwin Shaw).
As is often the case in these scenarios, the wily servants are given the best gags, and Alexander further tweaks the humor by casting actors who look nothing alike. Brewster seems to be channeling Robin Williams as he morphs through a seemingly endless succession of routines, while Green, the show's biggest standout, is blessed with an elastic voice, face and body that seem fueled by a thousand cups of coffee.
Laughs also flow when Garcia blunders upon his twin's neglected wife (Melanie Ewbank), who, mistaking him for her husband, wrestles him to the ground and gives him the mother of all wedgies — behavior entirely at odds with her false front as a demure, helpless soap-opera heroine.
Not all of the performances rise to the concept's challenges, and not all of Alexander's ideas suit the text. Still, there's no stifling the giggles as the show attempts every gag in the book: a sword fight with chopsticks, a ventriloquist-and-dummy routine, a Michael Flatley step-dance extravaganza, a ruler-wielding, disciplinarian nun and on and on. It all humorously amplifies Garcia's overwhelmed cry to the heavens: "Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?"