Bell rings up 'Comedy of Errors' at Drury Lane

David Bell cannot get away from Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors," or the classic musical Rodgers and Hart made from it in the 1930s, "The Boys from Syracuse," now playing at Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace.

"This is my fourth time directing 'The Boys from Syracuse,' " Bell says, "and I have done "A Comedy of Errors" seven times." (Fans of the Bard will probably remember his most recent hilarious, high energy "A Comedy of Errors" at Chicago Shakespeare.)

This time around, Bell wanted to do something different with "The Boys from Syracuse." He wanted to rewrite the show, creating a stronger story to surround those classic Rodgers and Hart tunes.

Is this sacrilege to be contemplating changing the material in a classic. It might be considered that if we were talking about one those shows from the golden age of musicals, the 1940s and 1950s. But "The Boys from Syracuse" was written in the 1930s, a time when, as Bell explains, musicals were being turned out at an amazing rate.

"Rodgers and Hart came up with a new hit every year," Bell says. How did they do it? They focused on the songs, and strung them together with often flimsy stories.

"It wasn't until "Oklahoma!" in the 1940s," Bells says, "that we start getting shows that contain great songs and a great story. Before that, you had really wonderful songs, and a book that, well, wasn't considered that important."

Bell decided he wanted to rework "The Boys from Syracuse" so it had some of the heft of the play it was adapted from. Bell felt he was uniquely qualified since he knew the Shakespeare so well.

He made one attempt at reworking the material in a production at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in the early '90s.

"I spoke with the people at the Rodgers and Hammerstein. Library (which controls the rights to the Rodgers and Hart shows)," Bell says, "And they gave me the rights to adapt the material. We rewrote the book and it was an enormous success at the Alliance in the early '90s. We thought for a while something was going to happen with the show."

Bell hoped the show would be produced at other theaters or maybe even make it way to Broadway. But things didn't work out that way.

"Life happens," Bell says, "And sometimes life runs you over."

Bells dream of rehabbing "The Boys from Syracuse" sat in a drawer for more than a decade before he took it out again for a production at Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace.

"We had a meeting and this show was the first idea I told them." Bell says, "They loved it. "

Because Bell wanted to do much more work on the material, he contacted the Rodgers and Hammerstein Library again for the rights. Again they granted him permission to do a major reworking of the material.

In his capacity as a professor of music theater at Northwestern University, Bell gathered a group of collaborators around him at the school, and started work.

"We wanted to construct this brand new musical out of the show," Bell says. "One that fits more appropriately into the what modern audiences expect to see in Broadway musicals.

He moved the action to 1938 and updated the original book, by George Abbott, to, in Bell's words, "embrace the swing era tone of the original score. It is very reminiscent of vaudeville, and all that energy and talent in vaudeville."

The show was such a success as part of the student season at Northwestern Bell confidently decided to create a professional version at Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace.

"This show is something I have wanted to bring to Chicago for a very very long time," Bell says, "It is ironic. My love of Shakespeare brought me to the material."

But his obsession with Rodgers and Hart, and his determination to bring those old classics back to the stage, kept him working.

"It is one of the tragedies of popular culture that the musicals from the 1930s were not considered to have a long shelf life," Bell says, "It is my mission to unearth the gems of music theater and show how they can appeal to a modern audience."

"The Boys from Syracuse" runs though Sept. 28, at Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook Terrace,

100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace. For tickets call (630) 530-0111 or visit ticketmaster.com