The phrase ‘Shakespeare comedy’ is an oxymoron with a long pedigree, one which perhaps stretches back to the late 16th century; and a running joke in Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow is that no one finds the comedies funny except their author, who thinks they’re hilarious. So it is a brave writer who, in a bid for laughs, bases a Shakespeare comedy on a Shakespeare comedy — in this case The Comedy of Errors. Fortunately, Marie Phillips has the wit, and sufficient wisdom, to pull it off.
In Oh I Do Like to Be… Shakespeare is reborn in a grotty English seaside resort, not once but twice. Billy and Bill are not merely twins but clones, some Shakespearean DNA having been covertly extracted from the late playwright’s teeth — Phillips is not overly concerned with historical or scientific verisimilitude.
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