Less a comedy than a tragedy of errors, this wearying production reduces a frenetic work to an endless sequence of tedious misunderstandings.
The Oxford Shakespeare Company was not helped by a downpour that drenched the first half hour of press night, but even the balmiest summer evening could not have shed favourable light on such a washout.
The aim was commedia dell'arte, but the result was a subpantomimic farce. The list of illadvised decisions made by director Chris Pickles is long: pratfalls, "funny" accents and, most disastrously, the ad-lib, which breaks out like a rash at the ends of scenes. "I think it's meat and two veg with our paella. Geez, man" is not a line whose absence from the First Folio will be much lamented.
The interludes for songs are not illogical - the musical The Boys from Syracuse is based on this play - but they would have been more tolerable if any of the roledoubling cast of eight could actually hold a note.
The least awful performance comes from Carolyn Tomkinson as Adriana, the wife who seemingly finds herself with two husbands. A wiser woman would have filed for instant divorce from both the Antipholus twins as played by Henry Everett. Cory English as dual Dromios with a nasal American whine is no better.
The final reconciliation, the benchmark by which this play is judged, is hurried and bodged, giving no sense of a long-sundered family gratefully reunited. This is the sort of evening that could put someone off Shakespeare for life.
Until 3 September. Box office: 020 7351 5417.
The Comedy Of Errors
