Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan opens
It says something about progress when Shakespeare is altered to include a same-sex romance and it’s hardly even noteworthy.
In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan director Greg Ochitwa turns Master Fenton, one of the suitors of Miss Page (Jacqueline Bloc), into Mistress Fenton. Played beautifully by Elizabeth Nepjuk, we see real love here even without the playwright’s words — making the efforts and motives of the other two wouldbe mates pale by comparison.
Shakespeare, the master juggler, advances that plot while taking delight in another more frivolous — the hazing of Sir John Falstaff (Joshua Beaudry). Running out of money, he plans to seduce the well-off Mrs. Page (Heather Cant) and Mrs. Ford (Kate Herriot). They play him for a fool in a series of humiliations.
Things could have become serious for a minute there with the insecure Mr. Ford (Jaron Francis) who doesn’t trust his wife’s fidelity. But the tone remains summer-light and even when Francis shifts into spitting-mad mode, he remains a pussycat. In fact, one of the funniest moments is the actor letting loose with a frustrated primal scream after his “I’ll be horn-mad” speech.
It’s a pleasant play but far from the Bard’s best. It lacks that one knockout moment, that one character you can’t get enough
of. The humiliations of Falstaff will have to do. In the first, he’s forced to hide in a hamper of dirty laundry, then dumped into the Thames. He emerges spitting mad and knocks back a bottle of booze in two gulps. It would have been funny seeing some Thames detritus stuck to him. In the second, Falstaff ends up dressed as a woman and is then beaten. In the third, he’s scared to death by fake fairies in the forest. Oh, the hilarity.
The suitors also come in three. The two preposterous ones are much fun to watch. Kenn Mcleod as Dr. Caius the Frenchman is an insufferable poseur, his accent over the top. And Mackenzie Dawson as Slender is humorously out of his league. The bow tie he wears was a perfect choice.
The time appears to be the present, but you never quite get a handle on what Ochitwa was going for putting Falstaff in hiphop clothes — untied sneakers, shorts so long they almost touch his ankles.
The strongest elements of the production are the polished and professional performances. The actors deliver their lines with fine pacing and clarity and listening to them is perhaps the merriest part of the night.