It is rare for a Shakespeare production to include references to Smokey Robinson, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Starburst, Golden Corral, Cheerios, Marlon Brando, Rodney Dangerfield, Fat Albert, phallic pickles, and Billy Ray Cyrus, but Matthew Tomlanovich’s Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare Dallas is hardly purist. The bard’s early play is itself silly, with elements of farce, raunchiness, slapstick, and even stand-up, but this production is relentlessly goofy, full of yuk-yuk’s and self-commentary and chaotic re-interpreting of the language.

The plot is simple, with many elements (identity confusion, reunited families) that would flavor many of Shakespeare’s later works, including Cymbeline (also being performed by Shakespeare Dallas this season). Two sets of identical twins, Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse and their servants Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse, who are accidentally separated at birth and somehow identically clad, engage in a series of mistaken-identity situations in Ephesus. I am still not clear on why the brothers have the same names.

As the Antipholi, David Goodwin and Damien Gillen are each unique, particularly Goodwin, who gets to have a little more fun, but it’s the Dromios who steal the show. Gloria Benavides and Anthony L. Ramirez have the most jokes in the play, both in Shakespeare’s original writing and in the liberally included addendums to the script, which probably add 20 minutes to the show.

It’s off-putting at first. There is an endless barrage of extra lines and in-jokes, to the point where it seemed like the cast was afraid of the language, or at least afraid of the show’s humor not working if it wasn’t dumbed down. Goodwin and Ramirez engage in a series of set-ups and punchlines, and one of the puns involves the word “bald,” which they laugh about, and Goodwin says “it’s funny because ‘bald’ is Elizabethan for trivial.” It is this treatment of Elizabethan English as a foreign language that makes the play both contradictory and fun.

For the first act, the strongest scenes are those that stick to the script. And every performer is clearly capable of handling the language and of conveying the comedy and truth behind it. Benavides and Ramirez are deft comedic actors, and they would have been just as effective in a performance where not a single silly modern line was added. Nevertheless, the jokes are relentless. Although most are groaners, and few of them are based on Shakespeare’s own comedy, some of the modern additions are hilarious. By the time Ramirez does his Brando and anime voice-over impersonations, and Benavides performs “Tears of a Clown,” the deconstruction of the play becomes undeniably fun. The disrespectful interpretation just goes on and on, like the Energizer bunny, until it finally somehow works.

This is one play where praise must go out to the designers — J.J. Wickham (scenic), Claudia Stephens (costume), Linda Blasé (lighting), Marco E. Salinas (sound), and David Walsh (props) clearly had a great time designing this show. A mix of commedia dell’arte and postmodernism, the black and white and pastel palette complement the goofiness of the salami-oriented props, one-man-band sound score, and slide. Yeah, there’s a slide.

Photo: Gloria Benavides as Dromio of Ephesus and Damian Gillen as Antipholus of Ephesus (Credit: Linda Blasé for Shakespeare Dallas)