Dragon Review: A Comedy of Errors and A Company of Rascals – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 21 Jul, 2025
Updated on: 22 Jul, 2025

Starring: Robert Duncan (Drop the Dead Donkey, Twelve Angry Men), Sara Crowe (Four Weddings and A Funeral, The Way Old Friends Do) and Guildford Shakespeare Company co-founder and Robin Hood panto star Matt Pinches.

By Barbara Ford

Wow! What a wonderful summertime romp! Such fun! A double-header with something for everyone. A tremendous achievement for the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, the Guildford Shakespeare Company, playwright Phil Porter, and Director and CEO Joanna Reid. Funny, ridiculous and clever – what’s not to like?

First, thanks to William Shakespeare, there’s a frankly silly, slapstick farce – I ask you, who gives both of their identical twins the exact same name? Two different families do it in The Comedy of Errors, that’s who. And there’s some fantastically intricate plotting, mistaken identity piling on top of mistaken identity, exit stage left, enter stage right, leaving you helpless with laughter and breathless with trying to keep up.

Just one of the pair of identically named, identical twins played by Joseph Richardson, and Jeremy Lloyd

You hardly notice the additional oddities: Syracusan merchant Egeon turning up in the last act in his underwear, or identical twins coming on armed with a ham joint and a baguette.

Then, thanks to Phil Porter, there’s a second farce, which is not only very funny too but also explains what all those characters in the first play were doing when they weren’t onstage – they were in The Company of Rascals.

Egeon (Robert Duncan) relaxes in the Centaur pub, but the Officer (Soroosh Lavasani) has caught up with him.

There are more mistaken identities and so on, but while you are laughing you get the additional intellectual pleasure of seeing how the two plays fit together, how cleverly Phil Porter has made the plot of his play dovetail seamlessly with Shakespeare’s while keeping its own logic. And you learn the reason for poor Egeon’s loss of his outer clothes and those twins’ bizarre weapons.

Smuggler (Matt Pinches) brings Egeon (Robert Duncan) into Ephesus (the Wey riverbank) on the Dapdune Belle.

It’s all so intriguingly staged: the audience has to move from one spot to another within the immediate area, as the plots dictate. We start on the riverside as Matt Pinches’ smuggler lands his contraband while haranguing the crowd and Robert Duncan’s Egeon is arrested by Soroosh Lavasani’s officer for the crime of being an enemy foreigner (maybe not so ridiculous these days).

Necromancer Dr Pinch (Soroosh Lavasani) gets the better of one of the Antipholoses (do keep up!)

Then we move into the main theatre for the arrival of Katie Carlton’s Duke, where she relents enough to allow Egeon 24 hours to raise enough money to secure his release – in Ephesus where he knows no-one.

The mayhem then kicks off and it get too complicated to describe – the audiences of the two plays part company, “Errors” to remain largely in the theatre, “Rascals” to move to the Mill Studio (decked out as a pub), to the garden (done up as a magic show), to the restaurant (decked out as, well, a restaurant) until a final coming together in the auditorium for the great reunion and happy ending.

The acting is tremendous too, with the faultless timing so important in a farce, particularly evidenced by Jeremy Loyd and Joseph Richardson, as the masters, and Peter Losasso and Mark Milligan as the servants.

As well as appearing in two plays at once, most of the actors play two characters: for example Suzanne Ahmet plays the glamorous aggrieved wife and also the magician’s put-upon assistant, while Nikhita Lesler plays both the sexy sister-in-law and the Weasel Hawker struggling with her stock who keep trying to escape (that one’s a “Rascals” special).

Great costumes by Neil Irish – he dresses both sets of twins, admittedly similar physical types, so well that at times it really is difficult to distinguish them. And then there’s the set(s), approximately 1960s with 60s music, providing a light summertime vibe and leaving me at least with some real ear-worms (“Walking Back to Happiness” anyone?)

If you haven’t seen the plays – book now! You can see them in any order, on different days or both on the same day. I saw the Shakespeare first, then Porter’s “Rascals”, both on the same day and enjoyed them so much I’m inclined to think that’s the best way! Whichever way, you’re in for a superb romp.

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