TWINS, TWISTS,
AND A TENDER TOUCH

The Old Globe Theatre closes out its summer Shakespeare Festival at the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in Balboa Park with a zippy 90-minute one-act production of the Bard’s early farce The Comedy of Errors. Grounded in the farcical confusions and mistaken identities that have made this play such a popular entry in the Shakespearean canon, director James Vásquez has relocated the play’s action from ancient Greece to the USA in the 1990s.

The cast of The Comedy of Errors

Comedy of Errors takes place over one single day. Aegeon, a merchant from Syracuse, has landed in the port city of Ephesus and is now under death sentence for violating the city’s ban on Syracusans. When a duke sentences him to death, Aegeon, in protest, spills his sad tale. He and his wife once had two sets of twins, their own (both named Antipholus) and another set (both named Dromio), who were adopted in order to serve the other two. Many years ago, his wife — along with one son and his servant — were lost in a shipwreck. Now, since his sons Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse have come to Ephesus to seek their lost twins and their mother, Aegeon has followed them.

The cast of The Comedy of Errors

Without getting bogged down in too much nonsensical storyline, let it suffice that both sets of twins are mistaken for their brothers, with each pair unaware that the other twosome exists. Confusions spiral out of control with the masters giving orders to the wrong servant, and the Antipholus of Syracuse falling in love with Luciana, the sister-in-law of Adriana who is married to the Antipholus of Ephesus. And just to muddy the narrative further, there is a running gag involving a precious gold chain keeps changing hands in a farcical tug-of-war.

Lisa VillaMil as Courtesan, Will Blum as Dromio of Syracuse,
and Brandon Micheal Hall as Antipholus of Syracuse

As with the play it’s based on — the Roman playwright Plautus’s comedy, Menaechmi — Comedy of Errors deals in knockabout comedy, like the Antipholus pair often smacking their servants around in traditional low comic fashion. But Vásquez takes a more realistic approach, with the Three Stooges-type violence held to a minimum. What the audience may lose in knockabout humor is rewarded by the final long scene of reconciliation that ends up telling a very human set of stories.

Daniel Petzold as Dromio of Ephesus and Will Blum as Dromio of Syracuse

The cast consists of ten front performers with another dozen filling in background roles, including some who make frequent appearances carrying open umbrellas for no discernible purpose. The actors who caught my notice the most were Will Blum and Daniel Petzold as the equally bumbling Dromios, along with Sarah Stiles as an outrageously spirited Adriana and Heather Velazquez as a deadpan-dreamy Luciana. Their chemistry, and that of the full company, creates a spirited atmosphere that carries the audience through the thinner midsection. But all the main actors deliver on the comic promise. Their combined talents would be an ornament to a play well beyond the capacities of The Comedy of Errors.

Sarah Stiles as Adriana and Heather Velazquez as Luciana

Designer-wise, the production sparkles. Costume designer Amanda Vander Byl floods the stage with with a gallimaufry of color and character. Lawrence E. Moten III’s scenic design evokes a 1990s fantasy cityscape — neon signage and thrift-store urban texture — that supports the show’s playful relocation. Sherrice Mojgani’s lighting sharpens comic beats and shifts the mood from nightclub shimmer to heartwarming reunion, while Melanie Chen Cole’s sound design ties period music and effects into the action, helping to punctuate the gags and underscore the play’s emotional moments.

Kevin Orton as Egeon with the cast

The play softens in its middle moments, but ends as most broad comedies do — with reconciliations, a family rediscovered, and a sense that the city has been, briefly, turned right-side up. The ensemble closes the evening in a company-wide upbeat dance that has us rocking with the performers. It’s not a radical Comedy of Errors, but it’s a bright, tidy evening of theater that honors both the playwright’s invention and the Globe’s steady craftsmanship.

The cast of The Comedy of Errors

photos by Jim Cox

The cast of The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of  Errors
Old Globe’s  Lowell Davies Festival Theatre
1363 Old Globe Way in San Diego’s Balboa Park
Tues-Sun at 8
ends on August 24, 2025
for tickets, call 619.234-5623 or visit  The Old Globe