The Boys from Syracuse (1938) is a Broadway musical with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, adapted by George Abbott from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors — itself derived from Plautus's Menaechmi. It holds the historical distinction of being the first musical based on a Shakespeare play, and its score produced enduring standards including 'Falling in Love with Love,' 'This Can't Be Love,' and 'Sing for Your Supper.'
What is danced
The article names George Balanchine as choreographer of the original 1938 Broadway production, directed by George Abbott, and Rob Ashford as choreographer of the 2002 Roundabout Theatre revival directed by Scott Ellis. Beyond these credits, the source gives no description of steps, formations, or vocabulary used in either production — the 'Musical numbers' section of the article is largely empty except for two title lines from the 2002 revival's finale ('Hurrah! Hurroo (reprise) (Sing for Your Supper)' and 'This Can't Be Love (reprise)'), which name performers (Madam, Courtesans, Luce, Adriana, Luciana, and the Company) but not choreography. The one substantive clue to movement style is musical rather than choreographic: 'The score includes swing and other contemporary rhythms of the 1930s,' which places the show's sound inside the swing era but does not by itself establish what was danced on stage.
Context
The production sits at the point in Balanchine's career where he was moving between ballet and commercial Broadway work in the late 1930s, a period in which choreographers began building dance sequences integral to a musical's storytelling rather than as interpolated numbers. The article does not describe what Balanchine actually staged for this show, so nothing further about his contribution can be stated on its authority alone.
Staging history
The original production opened at the Alvin Theater on November 23, 1938, after tryouts in New Haven and Boston, and ran 235 performances with a cast including Eddie Albert and Jimmy Savo. It was filmed by Universal Pictures in 1940 with Allan Jones and Joe Penner in the dual twin roles. An Off-Broadway revival ran 500 performances from 1963 at Theatre Four, directed by Christopher Hewett, and a related West End production opened the same year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with a cast including Ronnie Corbett and Bob Monkhouse. Later stagings include a 1986 Stratford Festival of Canada production (filmed by the CBC), a 1991 Judi Dench-directed revival at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre that toured the UK, a 2002 Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival with a new book by Nicky Silver and choreography by Rob Ashford, a 2011 concert version by the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, DC, and the show's Asian premiere in Singapore in 2012 via LASALLE College of the Arts.
How to watch it
Because the article supplies no scene-by-scene account of the dancing, a viewer has to look to the production notes of whichever staging they encounter (1938 original vs. 2002 Ashford revival, for instance) to know what choreographic idiom is being used. Listen for the score's stated swing-era rhythms as a cue to the period style the movement is likely responding to, even though the source does not confirm the vocabulary on stage.