The Boys from Syracuse – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Picture: Flavia Fraser-Cannon

The Boys from Syracuse continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 29 September 2024.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Musical theatre adaptations of William Shakespeare’s works are so commonplace now as to be nearly the default, but it all started back in 1938 with The Boys from Syracuse by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and George Abbott. This was five years before Oklahoma! and less than a decade since what is often considered the first of the medium, Show Boat.

Of all the Shakespeare plays upon which to base a musical, The Comedy of Errors may not be an obvious choice. It relies on Shakespeare’s favourite comedy tropes of mistaken identity and identical twins, which risk confusion in a large theatre with all the additional cogs of a musical spinning around the main action. It was thought audiences at a musical comedy usually wanted to switch off their brains and not think too hard. However, through some clever casting of actors physically similar enough to suspend disbelief and a genius script, the show was well-received and is now considered one of musical theatre’s finest comedies.

It makes perfect sense to revive classic shows at Highgate’s fantastic Upstairs at the Gatehouse. The space is intimate and allows its audience to appreciate these works close-up and on a small scale. However, can a work as complex as this one survive the transposition? The first worrying innovation is a slashing of the number of performers. This is already not a particularly straightforward play, and now we have only eight performers playing two or more roles each!

Fortunately, director Mark Giesser has done a sterling job of putting together a play just crazy enough as to be intellectually engaging and interesting, but entirely coherent. The jokes are given fresh life by a wonderful cast and at no point is this decades-old play based on a centuries-old play based on various millennia-old plays a chore. The production leans heavily into the absurd and silly sides of The Boys from Syracuse and as a result, it is a complete joy.

While Hart and Abbott’s comedy has lost very little over the many decades since its premiere, the music has lost no power at all. Rodgers’ score is a total joy from start to finish. Sounding particularly fantastic tonight are the classic hits ‘Falling in Love With Love’ and ‘This Can’t Be Love’. Musical director Benjamin Levy leads a five-piece band whose sound is remarkably wide-ranging. The timbrel variety achieved with such a small group is quite astonishing and elevates this production far beyond what you might expect from a Broadway show shrunken down to fit in a room above a pub.

As soon as you enter the theatre, it is impossible to not be struck by the fantastic set by Intellectual Property and Mollie Cheek and Matthew Lyons. It is cartoonish and delightfully lo-fi, but with details full of clever Classics jokes. The perfect tone-setter for the evening. Sam M Owen’s tasteful lighting design is never ostentatious but is leaned on heavily as scenes take place over days and nights, from bright city streets to seedy brothels.

However, if you remember just one thing from this production, it might well be the costumes by Alice McNicholas and Isabel Southey. Impossibly colourful, impossibly gaudy, and yet somehow I want to own and wear all of them. Incredible work.

Playing twins who are identical but maintain distinct personalities would be a challenge for any actor, but in their lead roles as the Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus and Syracuse, John Faal and Brendan Matthew are superb. Both display incredible acting and comedy chops, and keep the audience thoroughly engaged in the increasingly wild plot.

Also playing multiple roles with a focus on Adriana and Luce, the wives of the Ephesian twins, are the fantastic Caroline Kennedy and Karen Wilkinson. Kennedy has a simply astonishing singing voice and while Wilkinson is no slouch herself in that department, it is her brilliant comedic work that often steals the show tonight. Georgie Faith plays at least three roles too but gets to show off the most as Luce’s sister Luciana. In this role, she takes centre stage as Antipholus of Syracuse’s love interest and brings the house down with some moments of heavenly vocal work.

Supporting this main quintet are the brilliant Bernadine Pritchett, Simon de Deney and Enzo Benvenuti, between them playing approximately 4,000 additional roles. The potential for confusion is sky-high as new Ancient Greeks with the same faces run on and off stage, but we are treated to a plethora of accents and hilarious characterisations that keep us on track. What could be a bewildering nightmare or – worse – a bad sketch comedy night, is instead a near-coherent evening of silliness. And it’s Shakespeare, so it’s highbrow somehow. Perfect.

No spoilers, but the biggest praise should go to the two very special guests brought out towards the end to navigate the problem of the two sets of twins finally meeting. The performances we are treated to are delightful and perfectly round off a fantastically enjoyable and absurd show. Whether or not you have seen The Boys from Syracuse before, you will have your expectations shattered in the most gloriously colourful and absurd ways. Well worth the trip to Highgate.

Ian Bowkett