Pulling the strings
Cal Shakes and a posse of puppets open the season with The Comedy of Errors.

By Robert Avila

AS AVENUE Q'S puppets celebrate their Tonys, California Shakespeare Theater leads off its 30th-anniversary season with a nimble and ebullient production of The Comedy of Errors that avails itself of a mixed cast of humans and flap-jawed humanoid dummies. These latter beings – artfully designed by Chris Brown, colorfully draped in Beaver Bauer's festive costuming, and nicely set off against the blue-and-white Aegean schema of Rachel Hauck's minimalist set – approximate the dimensions of your average person, while projecting larger-than-life characteristics, including a sometimes Muppet-like physiognomy and a humanlike tendency to err that suggests organic brain matter gives their flesh-and-blood counterparts no advantage.

As the story opens, the merchant Egeon (James Carpenter) of Syracuse stands condemned to death by the duke of Ephesus, an imposing puppet named Solinus (operated and given voice by actor Brian Keith Russell), for daring to violate a strict trade agreement between the two lands. Egeon, we learn, has been hunting for his son Antipholus (Andy Murray) and his son's servant Dromio (Ron Campbell), who several years before had left Syracuse in search of their long-lost identical twins – a shipwreck had separated the family many years before that, casting Egeon and one set of twins one way, and his wife and the other set elsewhere. The sorrowful tale moves Solinus to delay Egeon's execution until evening in the hope that he can raise the necessary fine and buy his freedom. Of course, around this time Antipholus and his trusty man Dromio arrive in Ephesus, unbeknownst to their father. They become horribly, hilariously confused with their own twins (puppets operated by their actor counterparts), who have been living happily in Ephesus under the same names and, on this day, in the same clothes.

The two sets of twins roam here and there, and confusion spreads as the day wears on. Adriana (a wonderfully flustered Stacy Ross), the wife of Antipholus, and her sister Luciana (a blond shell of a bombshell animated by Joan Mankin) find themselves unexpectedly spurned and wooed. Further complications ensue from the confused quarters of a goldsmith (a felt strongman manipulated by Lucky Yates) and a local courtesan (a buxom block of wood brought to life by Liam Vincent).

The odds are long, but Shakespeare has taken care of hold-out skeptics by depicting Ephesus as a weird place known for its strange happenings and vaguely mystical aura. One might ask, "Wherefore art thou Dromio?," but the answer doesn't really matter – and that works for me.

Better, then, to sit back and enjoy the trip, buoyed by a terrific score courtesy of Tympanic Errants, who hover just offshore stage left. Director Sean Daniels (of Dad's Garage Theatre in Atlanta) lends a youthful vitality and a sharp, accessible comedic vocabulary to his Bay Area debut. His cast match him every step of the way, acting behind and opposite their puppet costars with aplomb and – by the looks of things – having a terrific time.

Campbell's charming performance and deft physical comedy amount to one of the evening's highlights. And for all the vaudeville shtick and Punch and Judy energy, the priceless wordplay is flawless.

Moreover, the comedy comes framed by an intensely melodramatic premise with existential overtones, whose darker colors envelop Carpenter's excellent Egeon. The puppetry augments the theme of troubled identities, or lives only half complete. And who knows if there isn't something larger in the coincidence of puppetry here and on Broadway. Could it be a by-product of a present that comes at us courtesy of marionettes? A measure of the influence of political puppetry in the pageant of dissent, brought onto the streets with some regularity now by the criminality of the Washington regime? Or maybe a reflection of a thirtysomething sensibility that reads the human condition in social terms first limned by the cosmopolitan community of Sesame Street? I leave you to work out those odds on your own.

'The Comedy of Errors' runs through June 27. Tues.-Thurs., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 8 p.m. (also June 26, 2 p.m.); Sun., 4 p.m., Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, 100 Gateway, Orinda. $13-$52. (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org.