"Comedy of Errors' in Brooklyn

Late at night on December 28, 1594, a company of actors attempted to put on a new play in the hall of Gray's Inn, London, for an audience that had assembled after an evening of riotous feasting and carousing. According to all accounts, the crowd caused such tumult and disorder onstage that there was hardly any room for the actors to perform.

As notorious as that evening was for its merrymaking (it was thereafter called "The Night of Errors"), it's hard to imagine that it can match the wild, wacky wonderful-ness of Edward Hall's inspired production of the same play (Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors) four centuries later.

Shakespeare penned that play expressly for the Christmas season, to be performed by the newly created company of actors called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It was a prestigious theater gig (the players were paid 20 pounds for the evening), and to impress his well-educated audience (primarily law students), Shakespeare chose a plot they would know: that of Plautus's The Menaechmi Twins, a staple item in university curricula of Renaissance Europe.

Two sets of twins

Plautus's tale of a young man from Syracuse, who, accompanied by his slave, travels the world seeking his lost twin, became the basis for The Comedy of Errors. But the Bard doubled the fun by doubling the sets of twins.

In his parodic version of Plautus, Shakespeare's protagonist Antipholus of Syracuse has for seven years been searching for his long-lost twin, from whom he'd been separated in a shipwreck. Antipholus is accompanied in his search by his servant Dromio, who also seeks his long-lost twin.

They arrive in Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor (an ancient city notorious as a center of deception and witchcraft), unaware that their respective twins both live there. This arrival leads to a sequence of crazy confusions in which one of the Antipholus twins is mistaken for the other. Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, ends up in bed with Antipholus of Syracuse, while her sister in turn makes love to Adriana's husband.

And so on and so on, with mistaken identities and mix-ups too mind-bending to sort out.

All-inclusive holiday package

Edward Hall and Propeller, his antic, all-male company, make hay of this mishmash of mayhem and madness. In keeping with the spirit of its riotous world premiere 400 years ago, Hall has set his "Night of Errors" in an all-inclusive holiday package resort somewhere in South America in the 1980s.

When you enter the Harvey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, you're greeted by a nine-piece mariachi band wearing Mexican sombreros, rugby shirts, sunglasses and sneakers. The musicians play their fiddles, guitars, shakers and drums, while an actor dressed as a policeman runs up and down the isles shouting "welcome to Costa del Ephesus" (while also admonishing us to turn off our cell phones).

What follows is a raucous rendition of the play, performed by the virtuosic all-male cast in an eclectic theater vernacular of farce, burlesque, clown and slapstick. Everything but the kitchen sink is included in this kitschy comedic mix. It's a veritable three-ring circus, performed on an empty stage dressed with candy-striped circus poles, colored lights and graffiti-scrawled corrugated iron walls.

High-top sneakers and red satin suits

The costumes alone are worth the price of admission. The Antipholus twins wear purple bell-bottoms and loud vests; the Dromio twins don shirts with smile logos and blue patent-leather high top sneakers; the Duke of Ephesus sports a red satin suit; Aegeon wears silver jeans; the Abbess is attired in a mini nun's habit and purple suede boots; and, my personal favorite, the courtesan (played by a man, of course) is poured into black-sequined mini shorts and halter, topped with an Afro hairdo. Adriana, the wife, in her/his tutu is a sight to behold, too. To watch these skilled actors in drag careening around the stage in stiletto heels is, well, a trip.

The band plays throughout the production, punctuating the antics with an assortment of horns, whoopee cushions, slide whistles and cowbells. The musical score is eclectic, to say the least, ranging from "When the Saints Go Marching In" to "The Girl from Ipanema" to a Baptist spiritual sung when Dr. Pinch does his exorcism.

My wife is so big…..

One of the evening's schtickiest highlights is Dromio's famed speech describing his enormous wife, wherein the actor indicates the breadth of her hips by traversing from one corner of the huge stage to another. "She is spherical, like a globe," Dromio describes. "I could find countries in her."

When Antipholous asks: "Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?" Dromio replies: "O, sir, I did not look so low." Ba dum, and so on.

That's not to say that the production's not artful "“ on the contrary, it's inspired, in conception and in execution.

The UK-based Propeller company is dedicated to rediscovering Shakespeare by performing his plays with clarity, alacrity and as much imagination in the staging as possible. With this exuberant production, the company makes good on its promise of blending a rigorous approach to the text with a modern physical aesthetic. I, for one, haven't had this much fun in a theater in years.