The
Merry Wives of Windsor
by William Shakespeare
Bard on the Beach
Vanier
Park
June 16 to September 25
$16.00 to $27.00
604-739-0559
http://www.bardonthebeach.org/
When the first characters who appear onstage in The
Merry Wives of Windsor are named Slender, Simple and Shallow, you pretty much
know you’re going to be getting Shakespeare-lite. Yes, this
is a play about Falstaff, but he’s hardly the complex comic
anti-hero of the Henry IV plays. Shakespeare has written him here
as little more than a big-bellied buffoon, a half-hearted lecher
who gets not one, not two, but three decreasingly funny come-uppances
in the tedious second half of this overly plotted play.
Gone, too, is the earthy physicality of the tavern world. The
two merry middle-class wives who punish Falstaff for thinking he
can get them to cheat on their husbands haven‘t a sexual
bone in their tightly bodiced bodies. Even Mistress Quickly, the
lusty tavern-wench, is more talk than action in a play where explanations
for what characters are going to do often take longer than the
doing itself.
Duncan Fraser as Falstaff, red-faced with apoplexy, maintains
an interesting level of dignity while wringing as much comedy as
he can out of a central character who is more object than subject
of the plot. The real interest in Dean Paul Gibson’s handsome
and energetic Bard on the Beach production lies in the sharply
etched secondary roles. The 18th century setting calls for an acting
style demanding in its physical specificity, and Scott Bellis absolutely
nails it in his hilarious French doctor, a dyspeptic Inspector
Clouseau. I also really liked David Marr as the jealous husband
and Colleen Wheeler’s robust Mistress Quickly. The other
women--Jennifer Lines, Kerry Sandomirsky and Lara Gilchrist--look
great and do fine work, but there’s really surprisingly little
for them to do in what is, despite the title, a man’s man’s
man’s man’s world.
Jerry Wasserman |