Merry Wives of Windsor

Merry Wives holds a special place in my heart, especially seeing it performed at Seattle Shakespeare, as it was the second play I ever performed in, and it was on that stage. So admittedly, I go into it with some prejudices about what characters should be like and how funny it should be, and so if it doesn't live up to those expectations I'm going to be a bit disappointed. How did this one stack up?

There's an interesting history to Merry Wives. As the legend goes, it was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth after she greatly enjoyed the character of Falstaff in Henry IV and hated his death in Henry V. In short, she wanted to see Falstaff in love, and wanted the play ready in two weeks for a party she was having at Windsor castle. So Shakespeare obliged, and whipped out a comedy more about Falstaff in lust than love, with a Falstaff that is leagues different from the original. Still, Merry Wives proves to be one of his funniest comedies, I believe, for its spectacular supporting cast of comic relief and its ripe opportunities for slapstick/physical comedy.

The story itself is centered around Falstaff, now old, fat and out of money, scheming for a way to earn his fortunes back. He quickly learns of Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, two married women of the town who control their husbands' substantial purses. He devises that he shall woo the both of them, and by extension come by their money. Sending an identical love letter to each, the two wives, being great friends, quickly discover his treachery and devise ways to be revenged on him including a bit with a laundry basket, a humiliating costume, and a final public prank in the forest. In the midst of this, the jealous Master Ford disguises himself to get in Falstaff's favor and essentially tries to catch his wife in the act of adultery (with a thousand "horn" jokes along the way indicating a cuckold). To the side are all of the comic relief characters, including the Welsh priest and French doctor, each with butchered English and accents written into the script, the gossip Mistress Quickly, the magnanimous Host of the Garter Inn who can't seem to go a sentence without calling someone "bullyrook", and a side plot involving three suitors each vying for the hand of Master Page's daughter Anne. Everything is of course resolved in the end, marriages are saved, the right suitor is picked, and everybody walks away happy...except for Falstaff.

Seattle Shakes decided to take this one old school, riding on the theme of performing in front of the queen, with period costumes and I believe an uncut script. A portrait of the queen hung above the stage, every so often producing a cuckoo from it's mouth to indicate the hour of day and provide some unexpected comedy, especially with Master Ford. But there was one problem with how far they rode this theme, just as it was a problem with Threepenny Opera. Every so often the actors would stop whatever they were doing to acknowledge noise offstage, in this case they would bow to what sounded like a flurry of horses and trumpets indicating the queen's passage. In Threepenny it was sirens and looking scared, with no payoff at the end. Here, there's a wonderfully brief payoff in the forest where the queen makes a cameo, but I still can't really excuse breaking up the action so frequently for a joke that, while funny, only lasted like 30 seconds. You want to do that kind of thing you do it twice, maybe three times, and you do it at the beginning of the show and right after intermission starts, not in the middle of a scene where all it does is distract.

Anyways, the actors themselves were all wonderful, though I often felt the supporting cast wasn't nearly as funny as they should have been. I couldn't pinpoint why, until the french doctor started coming in looking more and more accidentally self-injured every scene and realized, none of them really found their proper shtick except for the judge, who even though his physical-exertion-followed-by-back-kink routine was completely telegraphed each time still managed to amuse. The french doctor also had his wonderful moments of ridiculousness, especially after he started coming in injured, but others like the plain accented Welsh priest, the hit-and-mostly-miss high voiced Slender, and all of Falstaff's subordinates never really hit their mark. Each actor seemed to almost be doing their own thing, so bits like the fight between the two english abusers, the doctor and the priest, which should have been a complete murdering of language instead came across as a slapstick scuffle without the actual slapstick. Honestly I felt the only person who consistently hit their mark in both character and comedy was John Patrick Lowrie as Falstaff. Master and Mistress Ford were wonderful with their character, but sometimes missed on the comedy. Mistress Page often sacrificed character for the sake of comedy (her greatest consistent offense was breaking into an almost Oprah persona), and Master Page had a wonderful character with no comedy at all.

This all isn't to say the play wasn't good, or funny. It kept a consistently funny tone and pace throughout, but with a bit more order to the chaos, a bit more cohesiveness, this could've been a great production. Instead, it comes off more as a good, but average, comedy that simply missed its marks by a hair.

Merry Wives of Windsor gets an 8/10.