Post-show speech given at the Barbican - 31 December 2021

On the last night of The Comedy Of Errors

Today is the last day of 2021.

Tomorrow, we all step into an uncertain 2022, especially so in the theatre.

But there is something comforting in the resilience of this ancient ritual where actors and audiences gather at a stage to hear stories. The Comedy of Errors has a great link to this time of year. It was first performed on December 28th, 1594 at Gray’s Inn, not far from this very spot. Ten years later in 1604, it was on the bill for the new King’s first Christmas and new year revels – there ought to have been one a year earlier in 1603, but it was postponed due to plague.

Then, as now: The Comedy of Errors, a light Comedy for darker times, reminding the audience of better days. And it is true that these jokes are 427 years old…

Last nights are always a strange, melancholy moments in the theatre. Words spoken for the last time fly from the mouths of actors and fall to the floor, through the cracks in the stage and return to the earth. Usually last nights are an anti climax as people pack up their dressing rooms, say their muted farewells and head off, maybe to their next job… But this experience has been far from usual.

I wanted to say a few words tonight to pay a special personal tribute to this extraordinary team of actors, who have redefined what it is to be a company, who’ve supported each other, taken unbelievable delight in each other’s success, comforted each other during setbacks. Their timing is so good, they even got ensemble Covid. They understudied and covered each other in countless combinations of this production. All with the ingenuity and improvisatory skill of Hal Chambers, our assistant director who’s responsible for preparing the understudies and working out several plans on the backs of fag packets. This company have kept the show on and done it in the right way. With humility and generosity and huge, huge skill. The Comedy of Errors as a play, is a secular miracle. Where in the end, people only truly know themselves through the eyes of other people. Because of other people. What they’ve achieved since May is another secular miracle.

Many of this amazing company of actors were cast in 2019 and came to their first rehearsal for this Comedy Of Errors on January 4th 2020. We were due to open in the April of that year. We got eight weeks into that rehearsal period before the theatres closed – and we went away for what we thought would be a short break. Offices would shut of course, people hate going to the office, but theatres? No chance. What followed was the longest and widest ranging closure of the British theatre since the Civil War. The London stage still played throughout the manifold wars and diseases since Shakespeare lived and worked within the walls of the old city of London, where we are right now. But in 2020, for the first time since the days of David Garrick, no Shakespeare plays played in Stratford-upon-Avon in the summer. And still the actors waited.

In February this year, in one of the bleakest periods of the pandemic, the Royal Shakespeare Company hit upon an idea. To build from scratch a bespoke, socially-distanced outdoor theatre in the Swan Gardens on the banks of the River Avon. There would be only one production in this theatre’s rep, this Comedy of Errors. No pressure. From the first meeting about this outdoor theatre, to the opening night was a mere 160 days. The brilliant RSC teams at Stratford, led by Greg Doran and Erica Whyman and producers Zoe Donegan and Griselda Yorke, pulled off this mad endeavour. Made possible by the insanely generous donation of Lydia and Manfred Gorvy, with the support of Charles Holloway.

In this mad year, this production has played in five cities and to about 150,000 people – and despite pandemics, pingdemics, the vicissitudes of the weather in Stratford, we have lost a total of only 12 performances this year. Including one to the threat of lightning strikes on the theatre made entirely of metal. We’ve played through the wind and the rain. We’ve had the play drowned out by the noise of geese, ducks, and swans, the drums of dragon boats, Harley-Davidsons, Queen at full volume, stag weekends. We’ve played with nearly every possible combination of understudies, including, one night – having been heavily pinged – four understudies with our covid nurse playing the role of the courtesan. As Jonny Broadbent pointed out it was our third Courtesan that week – tonight is our 131st and final performance…

One of the miracles of this Comedy of Errors, was the birth of young Talliesin Boyd. Step forward Naomi. Naomi, amazingly a mother of baby twins herself, took over the role of Adrianna from Hedydd Dylan, who was herself pregnant. She played the role of Adrianna until quite late in her pregnancy and in the last days of Stratford and on the tour, this bump was a real bump. That baby, born on the 14th December, knows the whole role of Adrianna and can do it from memory.

I couldn’t pay tribute to this company without having all of us here. After so long grief, such nativity… Hedydd Dylan and Taliesin.

We have the Amazing Jen Davey our deputy stage manager in the box who’s called most of our 131 shows, we know she’d come nowhere near the stage, Janet Gautrey and Kimberley Towler I hope will… The brilliant music you heard tonight was by Paddy Cunneen who is sat in the fourth row. Paddy, please stand up and take a bow…

Tomorrow is the first day of 2022.

Tomorrow we will be the people who used to be in that production of Comedy of Errors. We step in to January 1st for the first time in a long time without our company, but with memories of great friends made in extraordinary circumstances, and as a result of this experience – great optimism for the future. It seems appropriate, tonight of all nights, on the last night of this most difficult year, to finish with words on the theme of friendship from another great poet of the last couple of hundred years, Robbie Burns. Words that might accompany us on future new year’s eves – when we look back and remember tonight. In Shakespeare’s old city, not many folk about, during a pandemic, amid the chaos, at a time where the droplets of laughter, sorrow and song spread the virus, how despite all this, we all came to the theatre.

Another secular miracle.

For that, thank you. Tonight, touch some strangers and join us in a chorus of Auld Lang Syne…

© Phillip Breen