The Merry Wives of Windsor
Playwright: William Shakespeare Director: Fiona Laird Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-avon (01789-403493). Until 22 September; then Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891) 7 December to 5 January 2019 Running time: 2hrs 50mins (including interval)
With The Merry Wives of
Windsor, the only play he set in England in his own times, Shakespeare in effect “invented the sitcom”, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. The tale of Falstaff’s vain efforts to woo two married women simultaneously is a piece that tends to work especially well if performed in modern dress. And in this delightful revival, director Fiona Laird – helped by “dazzlingly witty hybridised costumes” by Lez Brotherston – has turned to the exuberant hues of The Only Way is Essex, that primus inter pares of trash TV. This is Shakespeare with “a spray tan, a blonde beehive, breasts like weapons, leopard skin a gogo and killer heels”, said Ann Treneman in The Times. These merry wives live in “a pink world of DayGlo sunbeds, giant barbecues and some rather tame flamingos”. It’s a romp of a show in which Laird and her crack cast play unashamedly for laughs – and get them. What a hoot.
The acting is certainly impressive, said Michael Davies on What’s On Stage. As Falstaff, David Troughton is a model of comic timing and “irrepressible pathos”, not to mention a triumph of fat-suit engineering. And Beth Cordingly and Rebecca Lacey make a “superb pair” of Essex wives. But I have my reservations about the overall set-up. One should applaud any attempt to make Shakespeare readily accessible to modern audiences (especially young ones). It’s just a shame that much of the TOWIE concept depends on “inserting easy gags and Benny Hill-style slapstick routines, at the expense of trusting Shakespeare’s natural comic instinct for the laughs”.
The show works well as an end-of-summer caper, and should fit nicely into the Christmas slot at the Barbican, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. I did feel, however, that “some of the pathos goes missing amid all the pratfalls”. What I missed, said Michael Billington in The Guardian, was that crucial sense of a “real community with its own smug social codes”. There are many ways of showing us “this is a play about small-town life, but I’d suggest the only way isn’t Essex”.