Stratford's main theatre, equipped with orchestra pit and cyclorama wall, looks like an old German theatre—indeed it looks like the Berliner Ensemble's establishment. This is appropriate for a production of The Comedy of Errors in Brechtian music-hall style, using genuine clowning techniques, white-face make up (and even black-face make up for the one black face in the cast).

The point about the play is that without real clowning it is not really funny. It is obvious that in the original performance there would have been real clowns playing the two Dromios, and that without them no production can claim to be authentic. Yet all too often, when Shakespeare calls for a clown, what you get on the modern stage is a kind of whimsical and tiresome impression of what a clown might have been like if only we knew. Henry Goodman and Richard O'Callaghan make sure that they do not tax our patience in this way, but instead make us laugh.

The director, Adrian Noble, is generous with directorial ideas to speed us laughing through the plot, but the idea I liked best of all was that of making the actors speak the verse pantomime style, with a blatant emphasis on simple rhythms and rhymes. This is some of the best verse-speaking we have had at Stratford in recent years.

Paul Greenwood and Peter McEnery play the brothers Antipholus. Zoe Wanamaker is a splendid Adriana. The designer is the crucial Ultz.