There’s no problem with Scottish accents as a rule. It’s why we dropped Sky and got Freeview. It was like trying to phone Sky TV to complain about a problem and not understanding a word, because the guy at the call centre refused to moderate an extreme Glaswegian accent. His Scottish accent was near incomprehensible. In the first scene, I disliked his performance. I say the “Duke” because I think of him as the Duke of Ephesus, but in the programme they list Sandy Grierson as Solinus.

Ten minutes in, and you’re convinced you’re in a tragedy or history. I felt deeply sorry for Nicholas Day who after enduring the water torture, had to spend a considerable part of the last act of the original play suspended from a hook high above the stage with his hands tied. Egeon has to explain the plot between being subjected to “enhanced interrogation” 2000s style. It opens with Egeon being tortured by having his head shoved under water. Every Shakespeare play!) with black-clad soldiers. The programme for the Tempest has notes by the designer, who says it’s a “breached Gaza Security Wall” but that’s information not given here.The Duke is a kind of gangland figure (yes, again. The setting is a dockside in the modern day. We had tickets for the three, and this one came first. you can normally see two on successive days. Stratford has to do that rapid changeover to make it worth travelling and staying. All three are on successive performances on the same stage with the same actors. Three out of thirty-seven or whatever, written at long intervals. The thematic connection is tenuous, and no more than coincidental.

There’s an ensemble cast for the three shipwreck plays: The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. This set had to work with the shipwreck season. They also had much higher ticket prices for a much longer run, which wasn’t in repertory with other plays. On the set, the NT revolving town cost a great deal more, and couldn’t be toured. It was shorter, a mere 100 minutes running time, and this is Shakespeare’s shortest play in the first place. I’d still rate the NT production better overall, vastly better on set design, but this was also hugely enjoyable, and a complete contrast. Before going on, let’s make it clear that the second half won us over to this production, and we enjoyed every second of the second half. Our interval assessment gave the points to the NT on every single member of the cast, the set design, the music and the costume. In part two it was near impossible to see what was being lowered from the sky because you couldn’t see up past the roof of the Circle. We were in the back row of the circle, right at the side, on very high, thigh numbing seats, near an iron pillar, and had to walk round to the centre in the interval to even see the set design properly. The NT production hovered over our heads. It gave us a problem in the first half at Stratford. Adriana and Luciana were unmatchable as Essex girls, and Lenny Henry was Antipholus of Syracuse. OK, a few reviews were surprisingly snotty about that, certainly not mine, and it was a towering production, the set design of the year, a huge cast watched from the Olivier Theatre comfy seats and perfect sight lines. The ghost of productions past is always an issue with well-loved, often seen plays, but in this case the RSC came merely weeks after the National Theatre (NT) production with Lenny Henry. Jonathan Mcguinness – Antipholus of Syracuse

Richard finch syracuse