The Comedy of Errors is not only one of Shakespeare's earliest works, but one of his least revered. Granted, the mere sight of its title on a marquee won't draw a large middle-brow audience in the way that Hamlet would, though its absence from the Most Beloved Plays Ever makes it an ideal choice for a free-wheeling production.

The Guthrie Theater, a company long devoted to challenging the boundaries of drama, gleefully takes such an approach to Comedy. While their staging is not always comprehensible (one of us had trouble keeping track of who was who), it is consistently enjoyable and a perfect rebuke to those who want to keep their Shakespeare pure.

The play, set in the ancient Greek town of Ephesus, surrounds the confusion of two sets of identical twins: two masters—both named Antipholus, and their two servants—both named Dromio. Separated shortly after their birth, they have grown up not knowing that they are twins until they cross paths in this town. Comic entanglements and misunderstandings result when the brothers are mistaken for each other by a gold merchant, the police and (the source of a number of the twins' woes) one of the Antipholus' wife.

Directed by the Theatre de la Jeune Lune's Dominique Serrand, Shakespeare's play is staged in an entirely new fashion. From the first scenes, one can already tell how unusual the production will be. Egeon, the father of the twins, emerges on a strange contraption that appears to be a set of bed springs driven around by four turn-of-the-century bicycles. Lights flash and smoke scurries over the stage. Solinus, the Duke of Ephesus, doesn't wear Renaissance-era clothing, but swimming trunks, sunglasses, and a Panama hat.

The rest of the performance is pervaded by similarly inventive ideas: exotic costumes (for some reason, a minor character is dressed up like a mermaid), faux-operatic singing, and burlesque interludes that owe as much to Shakespeare as they do klezmer music. Enhancing the story's confusions and mistaken identities, stage hands and extras sit in front of the stage throughout the play and occasionally hop into the action to solve "errors" in the staging—but not helping in the end.

Serrand has said in a Star Tribune interview that he wanted the visual eccentricities to be central to the Guthrie production, even stressing that his staging of Shakespeare was "not about the words." A viewing of his Comedy of Errors reveals his quote to be nothing but false modesty. Shakespeare's wit can still shine through these fancy sets and even overwhelm them.

The dialogue written for the Dromios is a particular stand-out, namely a quasi-intellectual attempt to understand why servants are beaten and an incredibly lewd description in which he compares an ugly woman's body to the European continent (the punchline, of course, involves the Netherlands).

The actors find a perfect correlative to Serrand's exaggerated comic style––and it fits the staging perfectly. They give their characters certain contemporary flair to enhance their already humorous traits. Bob Davis, who plays the officer who arrests Antipholus, undermines his character's voice of authority by switching to a cutesy voice … when he receives cell phone calls from his wife.

Randy Reyes, however, is the standout of the production. His performance(s) as the two Dromios is hysterical and hyperactive, complete with an unexpected burst of grinding in the second act that brings the house down. Reyes is also keenly aware of how to play silence for laughs; his blank stares at Antipholus are often as funny as any of the dialogue.

What gels the disparate gags and performances together is Serrand's beautifully weird and imaginative staging. To be honest, some of his ideas fall flat (having one character wear a dozen pairs of glasses at once comes across as forced and unfunny), but one would much rather encounter this than a production which suffered from too few good ideas. Serrand and the Guthrie troupe have put together a memorable, fun Comedy of Errors unlike any other. And even if you don't like Shakespeare, it has a conga line singing about pie.