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It turns out I won't have to worry about that for the time being though, as the evening begins with the actors playing us a bunch of songs in a quasi-Elizabethan style. I'm not sure I saw the point of them playing quite so many songs, but the lute (or whatever it is) was very nice.

On with the play. Basically, the story as I grasp it is something like this: Mum and Dad have identical twin baby boys, both called Antipholis. They then buy another set of twin baby boys, both called Dromio, to be their sons' slaves. The six of them get shipwrecked and split up into two groups – Mum with the elder Antipolis and elder Dromio, Dad with the others.

Years later, the two elder twins leave their mother to go off in search of their brothers. They end up in Ephesus, where, (unknown to them) their brothers both live. While wondering the markets, they become separated and the younger Dromio sees the elder Antipholis wondering around alone and, mistaking him for his master, takes him to the younger Antipholis's home for dinner with his wife, despite the man's claims he does not have a house or a wife.

Put simply, everyone gets very confused because no-one knows that there are two each of the Antipholises and Dromios, leading to a very angry wife, arrests for jewellery theft and a spell in an asylum.

It could all have been avoided if the parents hadn't been stupid enough to give the same name to both of their sons. But then there wouldn't really have been much of a story.

Once you get over the idea that there was no such thing as social services in the 16th Century, and that parents were allowed to get away with doing things as stupid as that, it really is quite funny.

Luckily for me, the performers didn't stick to the exact lines written by Shakespeare, making it a lot easier to understand what they were on about. And once I got the gist of what was going on, I really enjoyed it. They should let schoolchildren study comedies instead of histories and tragedies when Shakespeare comes up on the curriculum. Then people wouldn't need to moan so much about how the young have no interest in him.

Overall, I think seeing an Oddsocks production is definitely a good way to get acquainted with The Bard's works. It's not always easy to make an old joke funny, but the actors managed it perfectly, despite the gags being over 400 years old.

But the best bit was easily the pantomime camel (like a pantomime horse, but better).