“The Boys from Syracuse”, Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Jeremy Malies in north London
12 September 2024
The Boys from Syracuse is a 1938 musical by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (currently playing at the Globe), so we should have two sets of identical twins. But with only two actors portraying those four characters, my first hurdle was that I could never pick up on what I’m sure was the colour coding or costume variant that should have told me which of the twins I was looking at. So with the many entrances and exits, I felt I was doing an exam looking for clues in the dialogue as to whether this was a visiting twin from Syracuse or a twin who is resident in Ephesus. George Abbott (book) wrote clearly and wanted you to understand the plot, but was expecting there to be four principals.
Photo credit: Flavia Fraser Cannon.
My second issue was with John Faal as the Antipholus twins; he was mechanical and predictable as his dialogue lurched into the songs. However, as the two Dromios, Brendan Matthew showed invention and was personable during the sequence of mistaken identities. He also contributed pace that often flagged among his colleagues.
The wonderful lyrics by Hart let Shakespeare’s verse peep through regularly and director Mark Giesser teases competent performances out of most of the cast. The stand-out is Georgie Faith as Luciana who falls in love with Antipholus of Syracuse. Amid some formulaic stage movement elsewhere, she is spontaneous and convincingly intense when the plot demands. Some of that charisma was badly needed across the board.
No aspect of this musical carries its years lightly. There was one good topical gag using the Amazon logo (obviously enjoyed by Bernadine Pritchett who played multiple roles) but at times I felt this was a museum piece. The liveliest element was the harlequin-style costumes by Alice McNicholas in just the right garish tones.
This has to be a high-octane helter-skelter evening but under Giesser’s direction it remained earthbound, sometimes with the tone of a pantomime. I never felt I was being taken by surprise. It didn’t help that “Falling in Love with Love” is so familiar from the Frank Sinatra recording and the song sounded musty as a result.
The outstanding component – and it’s brilliant – is the set by Intellectual Propery (a good gag right there in the name). I didn’t go up close to inspect but the backdrop truly seemed to be tesserae tiles. It won’t have been of course, but the effect was pulled off well and there were multiple decent jokes, with the mosaic being a kind of circa 180 BCE Friday-Ad with adverts for chariot rides and goldsmiths. Talking of goldsmiths, Simon de Deney enlivened things with his multiple roles including that of Angelo who is confused as to who he has made a gold chain for.
For the second half I sat right by the orchestra and enjoyed the subtleties injected by Benjamin Levy who conducted from keyboards. The shortfalls did not lie here; Levy was aware that many of the songs needed to have a jazz ballad tone but this didn’t transmit to the actors. I had a real problem with the overblown vibrato of Caroline Kennedy (playing Dromio of Ephesus’ wife Luce) which didn’t suit the reflective tone of her songs.
Only in the final 15 minutes (there is a neat well-executed resolution to the need for extra actors) did I begin to enjoy this. “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for you …” is a line from the chorus. I had never seen this before and expected something of the calibre of The Taming of the Shrew-inspired Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate (which is just about to finish a run at the Barbican). I don’t know if this is good enough for Shakespeare but anything by Rodgers and Hart ought to be. I should want to see another production before making a judgement. What I saw here left me underwhelmed.
