Opus 1: The Comedy of Errors

Dromio S. Master, shall I be porter at the gate? Adriana Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate. Beginnings can be funny things. Before the Beatles could commence transforming pop and rock music in earnest, they had to make their first album Please Please Me, a collection of pleasant but largely unremarkable tunes, mostly covers, sparked with just a few flashes of pyrotechnical brilliance to let us know what was coming. Before Tom Hanks could become everyone’s mother’s favorite actor, the first person to win the Oscar for Best Actor in two consecutive years, he had to take his first starring role in Bosom Buddies, a two-season sitcom about a couple of reluctant cross-dressers that is exactly as dumb — and as funny — as its title. (I have a feeling that Shakespeare would have loved the name…) Our man William has much the same story to tell. Before there was The Tempest or Hamlet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream or even Richard III, there was The Comedy of Errors, a deliriously…