A Comedy of Errors

This title could aptly describe the chaos of having work done on my house. We have hired someone to do some renovations on the girls bathroom and tile the entryway and powder room downstairs. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems. When Wayne(our contractor) removed the toilet and sink from the girls bathroom he discovered that our waterline turn-off was leaking. He needed to have the water turned off to the house to fix it and couldn't find the right tools. The plumbing places were all closed by the time he discovered the problem and Lowe's and Home Depot didn't carry what he needed. He suggested having the water company come out and turn it off, but they gave us absolutely no indication as to when they could send someone out. We waited for as long as we could but ended up cancelling the call because Mark and I had theater tickets. Mark was able to tighten the bolt so it leaked only a little so we could have water again.

The play that we went to see was Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors." It was performed at the Pittsburgh Public Theater's O'Reilly Theater. The O'Reilly is really nice, with seating on three sides and our seats are center row G, which are really good. The basic premise is that two sets of identical twins are separated in a boating accident. One of each twin with the mother and the other set with the father. They named both sets of the twins the same names. (that made little sense to me, but sometimes you have to take this kind of thing in stride) Years later the one set goes to the town where the other lives and a lot of confusion takes place. There is a lot of slapstick type humor, with the servant twins getting hit for doing the "wrong" job assigned to them by the other twins.

This adaptation had modern dress and staging, but still used the "old English" dialogue. This was okay for the most part, but there were times where it made no sense at all for today's times. For instance, Are there any cities ruled by a Duke anymore? I think it would be better to change the dialogue to update it if you change the scenery and costumes or leave it the way it was written completely. The "old English" is hard to understand and I was happy to get most of what was going on. The play is very funny and the actors did a good job with the physical humor. I did notice that the people sitting next to me and a few other couples did not return after the intermission. I thought that maybe they didn't return because they didn't understand it or were having trouble catching up with the dialogue, which was kind of fast.

My mother-in-law is taking my middle daughter to see this play in a few weeks. I hope that the language doesn't throw her for a loop. My husband and I decided that if we explain the plot to her she should be able to enjoy it.

Fortunetly Wayne was able to fix our water problem on Monday.

Have any of you been having your own comedy of errors?