Director’s Note

I wouldn’t call myself a “Shakespeare guy.” Nothing personal against Will, of course (his body of work is nothing if not impressive), but I haven’t read all the plays, I’ve never been one to know all the quotes, and I wouldn’t be a particularly good partner for ShakesBEER Trivia.

I have, however, always been a “Mario guy.” Or at least I have been since 1989 when I found the Nintendo Entertainment System, intended as a Christmas present, that my dad had hidden poorly in a blatantly transparent ploy for my brother and I to find it in advance so he would have a chance to play with it (to this day he denies it, but we all know the truth).

I have spent countless hours with Mario and friends – from the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES all the way to Mario Wonder on the Nintendo Switch – first with my dad and brother, and now with my Mario-obsessed son.

My relationship with The Comedy of Errors doesn’t stretch back quite as far, but it’s a show I’ve been wanting to direct for more than 20 years since being first introduced to the play in my third-year Acting Shakespeare class, where I played Dromio of Syracuse.

So why mash the two together? Video games are the most popular form of entertainment in the world, and with the Fools’ mandate to make Shakespeare accessible for all audiences, who’s more accessible than one of gaming’s most recognizable figures? It’s-a Mario!

Unlike some shows that disappear from memory almost as soon as they are done, the story of two sets of long-lost twin brothers has stuck with me. Not only does it surprisingly speak to contemporary times (the first scene features a man being sentenced to death because his presence in another country has been deemed “illegal”), but it’s built on the foundations of comedy that helped shape my sense of humour: clever wordplay, slapstick, and mistaken identity. It wasn’t until I was much older that I could recognize how much the cartoons, comics, and video games I had grown up with borrowed from and were influenced by Shakespeare.

Come to think of it, maybe I have been a Shakespeare guy all along…

Patrick Gauthier
Director