THE VENETIAN TWINS. To 15 November.

Bolton.

THE VENETIAN TWINS
by Carlo Goldoni translated by Ranjit Bolt.

Octagon Theatre To 15 November 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 8, 12 Nov 2pm.
Audio-described 12 Nov 7.30pm.
BSL Signed 13 Nov.
Runs 2hr 15min One interval.

TICKETS: 01204 520661.
www.octagonbolton.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 October.

Merry comedy with darker shades.
A sense of deja-vu when watching the Octagon’s latest production probably means you’ve seen Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Both share the confusions caused by the arrival of someone in the town where his identical twin lives. Here, there’s no doubling of twins among servants, as in Comedy but an increased impact of love and intended marriages. And while Shakespeare emphasises the sense of a world askew when strange things start happening, Goldoni twists his plot increasingly around corruption.

Some people live on, possibly to be happy ever after. But there’s a dark side to the ending too, with more than one death. And some would-be suitors left unmatched. As Goldoni took the character-type masks from his characters, giving them human faces, this becomes more noticeable, if not overly significant.

Certainly things move along bouncily enough in Paul Hunter’s Bolton production, thanks to both Ranjit Bolt’s lively English version and to the trampolines surrounding the stage. Sometimes actors encourage the trampoline-bounce factor, at more sober moments they discourage it (doubtless aided by Ron Heathcote’s trampolining advice).

Hunter’s production style, familiar to anyone who knows his company Told By An Idiot, could be said to replace material masks with the often expressionless or emphatic expressions the characters adopt. Like masks maybe, but more obviously, these seem to challenge an audience to see beneath the ‘mask’ of expression. This can be accompanied by an apparent flatness of voice that soaks up emotional responses, leaving the audience to imagine them, and possibly feel sympathy for a character seeming to accept ill-treatment or a bad deal.

It’s certainly comic, and Bolton’s cast carry it out well. In particular, Nick Haverson distinguishes between the ‘masks’ of twin brothers bright and slow-witted. But it’s a single style that wears thin over two hours, and perhaps particularly in a comedy. In several of Hunter’s productions elsewhere there’s been a mixture of comic schemes and darker purposes that allows greater variety – especially when the sympathetic Hayley Carmichael’s around, as she often is in the Idiot’s work.

Still, there’s a fair amount to enjoy here, and fun to be had.

Rosaura: Rachel Donovan.
Columbina: Joanna Holden.
Doctor: Alister Cameron.
Brighella/Florindo: Peter Peverley.
Zanetto/Tonino: Nick Haverson.
Pancrazio/Porter: James Traherne.
Beatriice: Caitlin Mottram.
Lelio/Bargello: Antony Jardine.
Arlecchino/Tiburzio: Dudley Rees.

Director: Paul Hunter.
Designer/Associate director: Michael Vale.
Lighting: Tom Dexter Scott.
Sound: Andy Smith.

2008-11-11 11:15:40