- guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 April 2010 21.30 BST
Tweedledum and Tweedledee ... Michael Jibson and Owain Arthur in The Comedy of Errors. Photograph: Jonathan Keenan
Roxana Silbert was recently appointed an associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, but as the former head of Paines Plough she has principally focused on new work. It's tempting to speculate what a script reader's report might be if Shakespeare's first play arrived on their desk today: "Dear Mr Shakespeare, your comedy shows signs of potential, but is hampered by some awkward exposition and an over-reliance on two sets of identical twins that is scarcely credible."
Though Silbert's ability to bring new plays to life is beyond question, as a director of Shakespeare she was an unknown quantity – so it was far-sighted of the Royal Exchange to present her Shakespearean debut. If the results here are any indication, she ought to go down a storm in Stratford.
Silbert approaches the play as if it were a new work: doing away with the interval and presenting a fast-paced, streamlined account that clocks in at a thoroughly modern 90 minutes. And though she cannot do anything about the mechanical nature of the plot, she at least ensures that all the component pieces are well-oiled.
We are in a contemporary Ephesus that looks like a fashionable holiday destination for bright, young things in search of soulmates with a similarly lunatic taste in clothes. If Sam Collings and Jack Farthing, as the separated brothers, are not exactly as alike as two drops in the ocean, at least they have frock coats tailored from the same pair of curtains. Both come accessorised with matching servants, who bear most of the emotional weight of the evening. The brow-beaten Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee Dromios of Michael Jibson and Owain Arthur are overworked to the point of such breathlessness they have to rely on matching inhalers; yet the miraculous coincidence of their reunion is so poignantly realised that one over-emotional audience member calls out, "give him a hug".
There's fine work from Orla Fitzgerald as a sexually voracious Adriana, perplexed by her husband's seeming tendency to be no longer in the mood. Fred Ridgeway's Egeon has trouble enlivening the clumsy expository speech that seems to take up about a third of the running time. Yet, once that's over with, Anthony MacIlwaine's simple, white-disk design so vibrantly suggests the bustling air of a Middle Eastern marketplace, I can only recommend you go along and souk up the atmosphere.
Until 8 May. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
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