By William Shakespeare. Directed by Scott Bellis. A Bard on the Beach production. On the BMO Mainstage on Saturday, June 13. Continues in rep until September 26

In Bard on the Beach’s production of The Comedy of Errors, director Scott Bellis makes the fatal mistake of trying to be funnier than Shakespeare. He creates so much superfluous, witless business that he all but obliterates the play’s pleasures.

What makes this doubly disappointing is that Bellis was, potentially, building on success. He directed a steampunk version of The Comedy of Errors at Studio 58 in 2011 that was a triumph of inventiveness. Bellis clearly didn’t know when to stop, however; the steampunk version that he’s directed for Bard gets mired in distractions.

The play itself is pretty wacky. It involves two sets of identical twins—two masters named Antipholus and their two slaves, both Dromios—who were separated shortly after their births. Looking for their lost brothers, the Antipholus and Dromio from Syracuse arrive in Ephesus, where their twins live. Everybody gets mistaken for everybody else.

As unlikely as it is, this premise makes for some hilarious action—but, Bellis, apparently, doesn’t trust the script. Luciana is sister-in-law to Antipholus of Ephesus, and when Antipholus of Syracuse falls for her, she is both flattered and appalled, thinking that her brother-in-law is making inappropriate moves.

But Bellis isn’t content with this piquant dynamic. In the main exchange between these characters, he decides to make Luciana a horticulturist who’s tending to her plants, including a Venus flytrap. Nell, a cook who is referred to but who doesn’t appear in Shakespeare’s original, enters and feeds one of her fingers to the flytrap, which is a puppet so reminiscent of the plant in Little Shop of Horrors that its use here flirts with copyright infringement. Then, for the hell of it, Nell regenerates a fresh digit. During the scene proper, Bellis has directed Lindsey Angell’s Luciana to constantly fuss with the plants, fumigating them and so on.

All of this activity crushes the humanity of the exchange. Overall, Angell’s Luciana is a dull cartoon.

Throughout the evening, Bellis often has characters tinkering with the huge machine that is Pam Johnson’s impressive set, upstaging the actors who are gamely delivering their lines.

Additions to the text strain to be clever but they really, really aren’t. Sent off to buy rope, Dromio of Ephesus, who is played by Dawn Petten, sings, “Rope, rope, rope your boat.”

In drag, Daniel Doheny plays a serving woman named Maud, and although his physical characterization is amusing in an Edward Gorey kind of way, his vocal characterization is so distorted that it’s unintelligible.

In one of the few passages that Bellis lets stand on its own, Luisa Jojic, who’s playing Dromio of Syracuse, acquits herself very nicely in Dromio’s description of how sexually scary Nell is. (Nell is married to Dromio of Ephesus and mistakes his brother for her husband.) Andrew Cownden makes quiet sense of the goldsmith, Angelo. And Jay Hindle brings more presence to Antipholus of Ephesus than one usually sees.

Ben Elliott, who is playing that central character, Antipholus of Syracuse, is a multiply talented guy and gifted comic performer. His chops and charisma shine though here; it would be great to see him in a less cluttered production.

Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s choreography is striking. As expected, Mara Gottler’s costumes are sumptuous and Gerald King’s lighting is dynamic.

But Bellis has overplayed his hand.