A LITTLE LESS MERRIMENT, PLEASE . . .
The Merry Wives Of Windsor (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon) Verdict: OTT farce ★★★✩✩
LAYING it on too thick is comedy’s greatest vice. Weighing gags down with extra ballast and bunting seldom makes them funnier.
So — much as I enjoyed the RSC’s hearty revival of the Bard’s trouser- dropping Berkshire romp — I couldn’t help wishing that Fiona Laird’s production had more faith in the play.
Unusually at the RSC, the director has been allowed to mess with the script. So, not only do we get references to the onstage barbecue and wheelie bin, but one of our merry wives greets the other with a: ‘How now, sweetheart!’
And never mind the baldly anachronistic ‘Oh my god!’ — David Troughton’s fatso hero Jack Falstaff, hoping to bed one of the ladies, also freely quotes Dick Emery: ‘you are awful, but I like you.’ I doubt that Shakespeare is spinning in his grave at this and, in the context of knockabout farce, tipping Falstaff into a stinking dustbin and dressing him up as a gypsy does make reasonable sense.
But laid on top of that we get sound effects from orchestra to signpost jokes. And, yes, there are entrances with tripping up and chaotic set pieces where everyone dashes around bumping into each other.
Maybe my 14-year-old daughter and I need to lighten up.
And Troughton certainly endears with his suet pudding Falstaff, who sets the tone by sporting a priapic codpiece.
Punishing him for his lust, Rebecca Lacey ( as Mistress Page) finds her inner Sybil Fawlty, bossing the stage and its errant elements — including a rogue golf buggy. And Beth Cordingly (as Mistress Ford) is a thoroughly lithe temptress who also drives Vince Leigh, as her rock ’n’ roll husband, to swiveleyed distraction.
Lez Brotherston’s set is a cunning mixture of the Elizabethan and the modern, with a residents’ parking sign outside olde worlde houses where timber frames light up like neon.
The costumes, too, are an ingenious fusion of ruffs and suits, doublets and chinos.
But with gags about Brexit, the French, dustbin men reading Proust, and a Kim Kardashianesque bride, I found myself losing sight of the plot.
Luckily, it remains a very merry knees-up. And if one gag doesn’t work, there’s a ton of others to follow.