by Peter Feher

A traveler from ancient Greece could easily get mixed up looking at a map of modern Ohio and set out for Athens, Macedonia, or East Sparta, only to be in for a shock upon arrival. Still, it would take a misunderstanding of exceedingly farcical proportions to embark for the city of Ephesus yet somehow end up at the College of Wooster.

But this is just the sort of topsy-turvy trajectory that has landed The Boys From Syracuse in the Ohio Light Opera’s current season. (To be clear: Our title characters hail from the Mediterranean, not Upstate New York.)

With a keen appreciation for comic absurdity, the company in residence each summer at Freedlander Theatre is mounting its first-ever staging of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s bygone 1938 Broadway hit. OLO’s production, which runs in repertory through July 30, is at once foreign and familiar — amusingly so.
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