Most of the performances are far from professional, so our inducement is the comedy itself. In the main crowd-pleasing success, the roles of the hapless servants, the twin Dromios, are wonderful opportunities for displaying antic exasperation, and Ed Nason and Rudy Cabrera both run their characters hilariously ragged. Nason's description of the repulsive Nell, whom Cabrera drools over, has her nose "embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining in their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain" — so you can see the sort of opportunities Shakespeare gave them.
You can't beat the price with free Shakespeare In the Park. Bring a picnic basket and it will be a nourishing experience as well.
Related:
Fighting Rome, Twin peaks, When the Bard goes for a stroll, More 
- Fighting Rome
It takes chutzpah for a first-time playwright to get into the ring with Bertolt Brecht.
- Twin peaks
The bay of Ephesus laps Collins Avenue in Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's Latin-tinged, frisky if over-frenetic The Comedy of Errors (at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common through August 16). It is not across sands of subtlety but through a spray of salsa that the perpetrators of this 1930s-South-Beach-set riff on Shakespeare's early comedy pratfall.
- When the Bard goes for a stroll
Summer means Shakespeare performed outside.
- Double vision
As someone who watches a lot of Shakespeare's comedies, I'm delighted to report that the Theater at Monmouth's production of Comedy of Errors is nothing but fresh, non-stop, stand-out fun, from shipwreck to filial embraces.
- Earnestly funny
Considering that Alan Ayckbourn may be the most staged living English playwright besides Shakespeare, as some accounts declare, why isn't he produced more often in American theaters?
- Brilliant and infuriating
Shakespeare didn’t slow dance when he wrote Romeo and Juliet — he went for the essence of impetuous young love like a brisk waltz.
- A smooth course
A Midsummer Night's Dream is arguably the Bard's sultriest, silliest, and most gossamer comedy. As such, of course, it is also among the most oft-produced al fresco summer offerings in the whole canon.
- A Danish punk
The sad mad Danish prince is probably the most oft-quoted tragic hero in the English language, but he's a lot more than that. He is also, as I was reminded recently by a theater companion encountering him for the first time, pretty exasperating to be around, as well as "kind of a punk."
- Play by play: August 14, 2009
Boston's weekly theater schedule
- Play by play: August 21, 2009
Boston's weekly theater schedule
- Play by play: July 17, 2009
Boston's theater schedule
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Topics:
Theater
, William Shakespeare, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Jim Webster, More
, William Shakespeare, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Jim Webster, Rudy Cabrera, Tammy Brown, Carlos Campbell, Mixed Magic Theatre, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Matt Fraza, Less
