Directed by David Pearce

Regarded by some as Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors comes to The Rose, Bankside now for the first time. Elements of farce combined with touchingly emotional themes of loss and reconciliation would return much later in more sombre ways, in works such as Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale. In The Comedy of Errors the comedy is dominant but the skill of Shakespeare’s composition is often overlooked in a play that's more famous for it's title than it's content. An early example of Shakespeare's cosmopolitanism, based on Plautus, set in Ephesus (Turkey), and with Sicilian travellers among its lead characters. Joining us near the river at the Rose is the perfect place to re-examine this work where the author probably met such similar characters four hundred years ago.