THEATRE REVIEW:
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
31 MAY/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

STRATFORD - Take an aging Lothario with ego and appetite both bigger than his pocketbook, throw in a couple of wealthy and bored housewives bent on intrigue, and then add a jealous husband or two.

Is it just another day of hijinx amongst the Desperate Housewives of Wisteria Lane — or, considering time and place, could it be just another opening night at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival? Stratford kicked off its 59th season Monday night in the Festival Theatre with a spanking new production — the sixth in its storied history — of THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

If you chose option B, chances are you’ve already heard at least a little about the production which, judging from the audience ovation opening night, is destined (despite its flaws) to prove as popular with Stratford audiences as its earlier incarnations. Happily, there are a few things to like in director Frank Galati’s sedate take on the joyously ribald tale, allegedly written at the command of Queen Elizabeth I, who had — unlike the two women of title — fallen for the charms of Sir John Falstaff, knight errant, introduced to Shakespeare’s fans in the two-part Henry IV.

Mind you, Elizabeth and her court might have been hard-pressed to recognize the tale, despite its genesis. For while it is still set in Windsor, Galati, with the full connivance of designer Robert Perdziola, has, for no apparent reason, marched it forward in time so that it now has the look of a rather prim, even chaste, Jane Austen romance. The text is still Shakespeare, however, as Falstaff (a prosthetically enhanced Geraint Wyn Davies) conspires to woo and bed a pair of well-to-do Windsor matrons — the lovely Mistress Alice Ford (Lucy Peacock) and the equally fair Mistress Margaret Page (Laura Condlin).

But while Mistress Page is possessed of a trusting husband (Tom McCamus) concerned primarily with marrying off his very eligible daughter Anne (Andrea Runge), Mistress Ford is not so lucky. Indeed, her husband, beautifully played by Tom Rooney, is obsessed with the possibility of his wife’s infidelity. So, when the two women discover Falstaff is wooing them both simultaneously, they decide to use Master Ford’s jealousy as scourge to Falstaff’s cupidity, deceiving both husband and suitor not once but several times over.

While all this plays out, a subplot unfolds in which three suitors vie for the hand and the dowry of the lovely Anne, While her father backs the well-born, but not terribly bright, Master Slender (Christopher Prentice), her mother supports Dr. Caius, a French physician (Nigel Bennett) and Anne herself favours the impoverished Master Fenton (Trent Pardy).

While all this sounds like the work of the Bard, sadly, under Galati’s direction, it only occasionally resonates with the kind of life Shakespeare celebrated. His Falstaff has moments of endearing charm, but Wyn Davies never succeeds in rendering Shakespeare’s enduring and endearing trencherman in strokes big enough and bold and broad enough to do him justice. And while Rooney’s Ford is a tribute to the inventiveness of both actor and director, Galati fails to anchor him down in a vibrant community. As played here, no one in the extensive cast, from Falstaff down to Janet Wright’s leaden Mistress Quickly and the Welsh parson Hugh Evans (Andrew Gillies), gives any sign of a life beyond that which exists between entrance and exit.

Finally, what seems most absent from this production is any sense of bawdy fun — a joyous, rollicking celebration of humanity, undertaken not despite our foibles, but rather because of them. One senses that if the lights went out in this Windsor, these people would simply sit in the dark and run lines.