`Errors' set in Vegas: An idea taken too far.

Byline: REVIEW by Paul Denison The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: Register-Guard arts writer Paul Denison reviews the first four plays to open at the 2004 Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. ASHLAND - It's a clever concept, setting "The Comedy of Errors" in a Las Vegas casino; and it's smartly executed as far as sets, costumes, lighting and action go. And the two - make that four - lead characters are terrific in this early Shakespeare farce about two sets of separated twins.

But the new Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, directed by Bill Rauch, also has some distracting flaws, and its emphasis on maximizing laughs makes the play seem more one-dimensional than it really is.

Some less-comic themes and earnest speeches get flattened in the process, and nobody notices because they're too busy laughing, as the audience was during the recent season-opening performance in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.

It's not easy to care about the characters as humans when the actors often seem to be mocking the thoughts they're expressing. This happens right off the bat, when Egeon, who has run afoul of a hostile country's cruel law while searching for his long-lost son and his servant, tells his sad story to a duke who looks like Frank Sinatra, and four Blues Brothers goons.

This scene should be somber, but it's played strictly for laughs. This happens again toward the end when Emilia, a nun who turns out to be Egeon's long-lost wife, delivers some happy-ending exposition and exclaims "after so long grief, such joy," or words to that effect.

You can't feel the joy because you never felt the grief, and because Emilia herself has just poked fun at her own speechifying.

The director and some of the actors can share blame for not making more of such noncomic elements and themes in the text. But Ray Porter masterfully mixes caricature and deeper characterization as he creates two palpably distinct characters: Antipholus of Syracuse and his identical twin, Antipholus of Ephesus. And so does Christopher DuVal as the identical twin servants, both named Dromio.

On stage almost all the time, switching characters in every scene, Porter and DuVal make you believe that you're watching four different individuals, especially in scenes with Adriana (Crystal Fox) and Luciana (Aisha Kabia). That's mighty fine acting, and fine directing, too.

Using huge hanging/flipping/sliding flats, a staircase, some mirrors and a turntable with a dangerous palm tree, scenic designer William Bloodgood has created a casino set that enables the story to flow at a good clip.

Costume designer Joyce Kim Lee has created some hilarious costumes, including a waitress with an overstarched skirt that looks like a roulette wheel, a courtesan with a towering flamingo pink feather boa headdress and Egeon in Western high-roller duds: ivory-colored suit, bolo, cowboy hat and boots, gold jewelry and a rodeo buckle big enough to serve steak and eggs on.

Along with Frank Sinatra (the duke), other casino characters criss-cross the stage, including boxing promoter Don King and playperson Hugh Heffner, leading a conga line.

You'll hear a bewildering array of American, British and European accents in this show, including a couple that just don't work with Elizabethan English and some that are simply inconsistent. This is hard on the actors, unfair to the text and at times annoying for the audience.

This is a highly entertaining show, with all the razzle-dazzle you would expect from a festival trying to fire the Shakespeare canon with fresh gunpowder. The errors in this comedy come from following a concept a little too far.

"The Comedy of Errors" will continue through Oct. 31.

OPENING LATER

Opening dates for other plays coming later this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:

``Henry VI, Part 1'': March 31

``A Raisin in the Sun'': April 20

``Henry VI, Parts 2 & 3'': June 9

``King Lear'': June 8

``Much Ado About Nothing'': June 10

``Humble Boy'': July 6

``Oedipus Complex'': July 28