The Merry Wives of Windsor Archives

If Shakespeare chose a modern company to perform his work then it would undoubtedly be The Pantaloons; I’m equally sure he would be thrilled with director Steve Purcell’s adaptation of a play that had The Pantaloons stamped all over it when it was first written. Roguish knight Falstaff (Alex Rivers) is down on his luck and reliant on the good will of the Host (William Ross-Fawcett) of his local tavern to keep him in good spirits of any kind! When he informs servants Nym (Jodie Micciche) and Pistol (Andrew Armfield) that he intends to seduce Mistress Ford (Micciche) and Mistress Page (Armfield) they refuse to deliver his letters, so he throws them out. When the letters eventually arrive via Mistress Quigley (Micciche) the two ladies laugh over their similarity and decide to get their rev...

Approaching Shakespeare with much as much joy and as little reverence as the children’s book “When Pigasso met Mootisse” treats the artists whose work it adapts, this production is technically recognizable as one of the most often neglected of the great playwright’s works but is in many ways a chimera of Elizabethan bawd, modern sensibility, and eighties sound. Not only soundtracked by the hits of that decade, this script is also peppered with cultural references time-specific enough that its heightened accessibility is restricted almost exclusively to audiences Gen X and up. This is not entirely a bad thing. Even the least meddled with performing script of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor has both a humour and a logic inherent to it that demands an adult understanding of money ...

Tag: The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare North Playhouse

The Merry Wives of Windsor – The Roman Theatre of St Albans