THE COMEDY OF ERRORS RSC at Roundhouse

Shakespeare’s knockabout farce about two sets of twins has been every director’s plaything since Komisarjevsky’s famous 1938 production at Stratford. Amir Nizar Zuabi sets his all-screeching, all-shouting production in an unexpectedly brutal police state where illegal immigrants (arriving by the crate-load) are liable to be shot in the head and their bodies tied up in a black bag and dumped in the sea. The opening scene is the most boring exposition in all Shakespeare and is not helped here by having one actor speak with a thick Scottish accent and another deliver a very long monologue whilst he is enduring water torture. The one genuinely funny moment, a real verbal music hall treat, is when Dromio (Bruce McKinnon, a first-rate clown) describes a greasy kitchen maid’s gross spherical body in terms of countries.