Aquila plays `hyperkinetic production’

What do South Park, Ace Ventura and William Shakespeare have in common? Not much until elements of each collide with the Aquila Theatre Company of London, which performed a hyperkinetic production of “The Comedy of Errors” Monday at the Maine Center for the Arts. Filled with cartoonish antics, gangly slapstick, wacky set pieces and a mugging cast, Aquila goes buggy on all those required-reading texts you dreaded in high school.

Except this time around, it’s not agonizing. Indeed, Aquila makes the old standards bubble and fizz with such effervescence, it’s downright adolescent. In a good way.

“Comedy of Errors” is a little bit farce, a little bit fairy tale, and with Aquila, it’s also a little bit Monty Python. The rubbery actors use their bodies to pull off outlandish sight gags for a jumbled story in which A is mistaken for B, and C is mistaken for D, and somebody’s wife — not to mention her sister — is very perplexed. And, go figure, they all speak in meter. Add a fair amount of hip thrusting, arm flapping, belly dancing and floor tumbling, and you have a dandy sport for the ear and the eye. It’s the type of performance that leaves you exhausted and exhilarated.

Directed by Robert Richmond, who carries a long list of British theater credits, “Comedy of Errors” was a merry-go-round of comic bits compiled from the rhythms of street dance, the resilience of video games and the irreverence of cable TV. With pinpoint choreography and intelligent theatricality, Aquila is a champ at bringing literary classics to the MTV generation. The energy may be tiresome for a purist. But this troupe, which showed up here last year with stimulating versions of “Julius Caesar” and “The Birds,” takes innovative liberties with timeless tales and comes up with modern relevancy — and the kind of fun we wish we had been having back in freshman English class.

Tonight, Aquila returns to the Maine Center Homer’s “The Odyssey.” One assumes it will be quite a trip.

The Aquila Theatre Company of London will perform 7 p.m. Feb. 23 at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 581-1755.