Review: THE BOMB-ITTY OF ERRORS at Fishtank

The thing about Shakespeare, as has often been noted, is that you can pretty much do anything to it and it will still be Shakespeare. We've seen his works set in every conceivable time and place, stagings from ornate to bare, interpreted into every language and every means of communication short of signal flags. Take The Comedy of Errors; this reviewer has seen (among others) a fairly serious performance at the National, a raucous version put on by a troupe of jugglers, and now The Fishtank's production of The Bomb-Itty of Errors, a trimmed-down hip-hop version currently playing at the Black Box theatre in the West Bottoms.

You know the story by now: two sets of identical twins get separated in childhood, one pair of brothers wanders into the others' hometown, confusion reigns, hijinks ensue, you know the drill. In the end everyone gets reunited and all sins are forgiven. It's a convoluted plot and not always the easiest to follow, but it does come together rather neatly in the end, so all is well. In skilled hands, it can make for a very satisfying bit of theatre.

The production is a light one: only four performers taking four characters each, with a live DJ spinning the beats. Necessarily, multiple chunks of the story have to be cut out, with several characters disappearing altogether and the big climax at the end having to be extensively reworked. An argument can be made that this yields a more coherent story, but it also does mean a comparatively large amount of stage time waiting for people to change. The four performers do a great job overall, though one or two needed a couple of scenes to get their flow going.

Overall, it works well. The humor has been brought up-to-date, and the whole thing is true to its old-school hip-hop roots (inasmuch as a middle-aged white woman from the suburbs is in a position to judge, mind you). One exception was the "wacky" cop, which this reviewer is uncertain quite what they were going for with this characterization. They just seemed to be wacky-just-to-be-wacky. Fortunately, it's a short role, and the other characters are rather more grounded.

The music and rap were pretty good for the most part. There were a couple of rhymes where you could hear the tires skidding a bit (rhyming "Ephesus" with "breakfast is", for example), but overall it went very well. A particular favorite number of this reviewer was "It's your own damn fault", in which Adriana & Luciana's initial dialogue gets turned into a rant about men who take their wives for granted.

Bomb-itty is performed outside, in a courtyard just abutting the theatre. Those wishing to attend should bear in mind that seats are not provided, so bring a camping chair. There are some tables on a first-come-first-serve basis, open bar service throughout the production, and a nearby food truck with tacos, sandwiches, etc. Per the venue's request, please bring an ID and proof of vaccination. It's a light, diverting take on one of Shakespeare's more accessible works, and just the thing to accompany a late summer night.

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