Stream: The Merry Wives of Windsor
Elle While’s production for Shakespeare’s globe is rowdy, smutty, and full of inuendo, just as Queen Elizabeth and her audiences liked their comedies to be. This production, set in the 1930’s, does just that. Written in 1597 around the same time as Henry IV part one and two, legend says that the Queen wished to see Falstaff fall in love. It is predominately a prose comedy written, it is said in a fortnight, for a special celebration at Windsor. It reprises and places Sir John Falstaff at the centre of the action as he plots to become a gigolo sending two identical love letters to prosperous citizen’s wives. Thus, the mayhem begins. Suitors end up marrying boys, Falstaff is assailed by Windsor fairies (children in the woods), and of course all ends happily with a marriage and a jig. All depart home “to laugh this sport o’er by a country fire”.
Noisy and hectic the cast charge through the play at breakneck speed with clear delivery, storytelling and not an innuendo missed. I had recently watched the whole of ‘the Hollow Crown’ with Simon Russel Beales’ magnificent performance as Falstaff. A character I had always found hard to like or find funny until then. This was a hard act to follow and Pearce Quigley delivered a heavy-handed performance milking the laughs unashamedly. Admitted comedy is an art form difficult to deliver. Playing it with a Yorkshire accent, perhaps a nod to the club comedians of the past might have made him funnier. A strange choice for Windsor. It was a bonus to discover a past student Joshua Lacey as Abraham Slender demonstrating his college dance training and taking the stage with his physical comedic attributes.
The costumes were lavish, for the Globe, but for me slightly out of kilter. The band were lively and punctuated the performance bringing key parts to life. I can imagine with a few drinks the Elizabethans would have been cheering and chortling. The Globe audience certainly did. I suspect the box office did well too.
Available for free on YouTube until the 14th of June.
