"The Comedy of Errors," will mark the Shakespearean debut of singer Roger Daltrey, front right. With Daltrey are Michael Kitchen, front left, and Wendy Hiller and Cyril Cusack, rear.

ROGER Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, will make his debut as a classical actor on Wednesday at 9 p.m., when "The Comedy of Errors" airs over PBS on "The Shakespeare Plays."

Daltrey, one of the most popular figures in international contemporary music, joins a cast that includes Michael Kitchen, Cyril Cusack, Dame Wendy Hiller, Suzanne Bertish, Joanne Pearce and Charles Gray.

"The Comedy of Errors" is the shortest and most outrageous of Shakespeare's comedies, a tangle of mistaken identities and absurd situations.

Antipholus of Syracuse (Kitchen) and his servant, Dromio (Daltrey), stumble into the city of Ephesus, unaware that their twin brothers - also, for some inexplicable reason, named Antipholus and Dromio - live there.

Before the day is over, both sets of twins have good reason to doubt their sanity and that of the entire town.

Daltrey and Kitchen play all four twins, meeting in Act 5 through a bit a electronic wizardry.

Shakespeare based his play on a Roman comedy, "The Menaechmi," by Plautus, but threw in the twin servants as an original contribution to compound the confusion. For extra spice he turned to another play by Plautus and borrowed the scene in which an unknowing wife entertains the wrong twin while her real husband hammers in vain at the door.

Although "The Comedy of Errors" is often played for its considerable slapstick potential, the director of this production, James Cellan Jones, says that his version will stress the human side of the situation.

"It's about two blokes who suddenly find themselves in a very strange town surrounded by suspicious people, and suddenly all sorts of mysterious things begin to happen to them. They never quite know what they're going to meet.

"And one of the most singularly frightening things that can happen to anybody is the feeling that somebody else is wearing your clothes, clothed in your own flesh, wandering about saying and doing things on your behalf."

Of course, all ends happily, with the reunion not only of the four twins, but of the parents (Cusack and Dame Hiller) as well. Mistaken identities are explained, harmony is restored, families are reunited, and many of the themes Shakespeare later explored in darker and heavier plays emerge in the effervescent finale.

Though Daltrey received plaudits in the past for some of his screen performances, he had never acted in a Shakespearean production before. And he came to Shakespeare not only hesitantly but unwillingly.

As a child he had been alienated from the master playwright by thoughtless teachers and an inadequate educational system, he says. Instructors, concentrating on Shakespeare's grammar rather than his prose, made his fascinating use of English seem like a lesson in Greek.

"They made it so boring," says Daltrey. "They combined Shakespeare with English instead of exploring the play and what the man was saying, which is a great mistake."

At the coaxing of his agent, Daltrey reluctantly agreed to read the play. Only then did he learn what he'd been missing. He also learned that his background in music gave him a natural ear for the rhythm of the verse.

"To me it's just something that's perfectly natural. I read through it and loved it. It's so well written and in such good fun."

Almost immediately he became a fan, attending Shakespearean productions wherever he could find them. One of the first was the play he was about to do.

"I saw 'The Comedy' at the Stratford just before we did it. And I loved it. I really loved it. They really did draw you into the play and make you comfortable with it."

Daltrey liked it so much he is not averse to the possibility of a stage production in the future. "One production a year would be wonderful."

One reason Daltrey would like to perform Shakespeare on stage is because he sees it as a vehicle for audience involvement.

"During some of those long monologues you want to screa[u] 'Get off and get on with it,' he says. "I'm sure Shakespeare wrote some of it to get people doing that."

Roger Daltrey's background in music gave him a natural ear for the rhythm of verse.