The Merry Wives of Windsor
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Fiona Laird
Music by Fiona Laird
Designed by Lez Brotherton
Physical Comedy Director Toby Park
Posed photo for online at RSC: Mistress Page left. Mistress Ford right
Royal Shakespeare Company
Stratford-upon-Avon
Saturday 11thAugust 2018, 13.00
The programme
CAST:
townspeople:
Rebecca Lacey- Mistress Page
Paul Dodds – George Page
Karen Fishwick – Anne Page, daughter to Master Page
Beth Cordingley – Mistress Ford
Vince Leigh – Frank Ford
David Acton – Sir Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson
Jonathan Cullen – Dr Caiuis, a French doctor
Ishia Bennison – Mistress Quickly, housekeeper to Dr Caius
Stevie Basuala -John Rugby, servant to Dr Caius / Robuk
Luke Newberry – Fenton, a young gentleman
Sakuntala Ramanee – Beautician
at the garter
Katy Brittain – The hostess of the Garter
David Troughton – Sir John Falstaff
Nima Taleghani – Robin, pageboy to Falstaf
Afolaba Alli- Pistol,
Josh Finan – Nym / Jan
Charlotte Josephine – Bardolph
Tim Samuels – Shallow, a Justice of the Peace
Tom Padley- Slender, nephew to Shallow
John Macualey – Simple, servant to Slender
LIVE MUSIC
Juliana Day- recorders
Jude Rees – clarinet/ alto sax/alto crumhorn/ soprano shawn
David Jarratt-Knock- cornett / alto shawn / bagpipes
Sianed Jones – viola da gamba / violin
Nick Lee- guitars / lute
Ayse Osman – double bass / bass guitar
Tim Farmer- percussion
Gareth Ellis – keyboards / accordion / Musical Director
The director is Fiona Laird, who also composed the music.
The programme gives a good synopsis. Very briefly …
Anne Page (Karen Fishwick) and her chosen suitor, Fenton (Luke Newberry)
The Pages want to marry off their daughter, Anne. She has three suitors: Slender (the nephew of Justice of the Peace, Shallow) favoured by her father; Dr Caius (a ferocious Frenchman) favoured by her mother; and Fenton, a posh gentleman who is favoured by Anne herself. Mistress Quickly is the doctor’s housekeeper, acting as a go-between and hoping to profit from the help she offers.
David Troughton as Falstaff
Falstaff, “the fat knight”, is in Windsor with a bunch of followers, and is down on his luck, needs money and plans to seduce two local rich “wives” Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Master Ford is fiercely jealous and discovers the plan. He disguises himself as “Brooks” to find out more and pays Falstaff to try to seduce Mistress Ford so that he can test her fidelity. The women find out that Falstaff is trying to woo them both (with identical love letters) and set out to revenge themselves on Falstaff.
Mistress Ford (Beth Cordingley), Mistress Quickly (Ishia Bennison), Mistress Page (Rebecca Lacey)
The Only Way is Windsor … it says on the RSC website, which echoes the sitcom The Only Way Is Essex. Let’s add Birds of A Feather and Footballer’s Wives. I loved the RSC’s 2012 version set among the Rugger-loving county set. It’s one of the most memorable RSC productions for me. Now we’re further into London suburbia, in Essex, spawn of all those Essex girls jokes. The wheelie bin, so important in the plot replacing the laundry basket, is pink and labelled “Royal Borough of Windsor & Essex.”
Legend (dating from 1705) has it that the play was requested by the Queen, who wished to see ‘Falstaff in Love.’ The story is that Shakespeare wrote the play in ten days, or two weeks maximum:
We have the word of the serious-minded and responsible playwright John Dennis that (it) was written in ten days, two weeks at the most, which suggests that Shakespeare was none too pleased to be royally diverted from his second historical tetralogy. Nor did he make by his standards much effort. His least funny play was a rush job. Anthony Holden: William Shakespeare (1999)
Holden repeats the disdain for the play, common from my generation’s teachers (I quoted Simon Callow on this in my 2012 review). Well, he’s wrong on two counts. First it’s an extremely funny play indeed, never more so than in this production. And secondly, what’s wrong with a rush job? It focusses the mind. Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in just four days and Hay Fever in three days.
This production starts most unusually. We have an unseen Shakespeare being told by Elizabeth I to write it (she is an animation projected on a sheet). The sequence ends with her telling him she wants it in two weeks. My mind flew at once to the Ben Elton sitcom about Shakespeare, Upstart Crow. I could hear David Mitchell’s voice as Shakespeare in my head saying ‘OK. Bugger the iambic pentameters. It’ll have to be prose, then!’
The play has the highest percentage of prose of any Shakespeare play. I’m not counting but the internet says 90% is prose.
If you are writing situation and character, and not trying to make syllables fit into a tight pattern, you can work fast. This play is arguably the first sitcom, the first citcom too, i.e. “city comedy” (though set in the suburbs) … that is, it’s about middle class characters, not aristocracy or legendary characters. The line to City Comedy and on to Restoration Comedy is clear. Slender is the country bumpkin suitor out of his comfort zone, in a more sophisticated setting. It also employs what became the classic situations of farce … jealous husband, comically hidden lover, banging into doors as the search begins (here banging into wheelie bin lid). It introduces Malapropisms with Mistress Quickly. In terms of influence on later comedy, this is the golden one.
Introductions to projected text on a sheet: Jonathan Cullen as Dr Caius, Luke Newberry as the heroic Fenton
Having heard the Shakespeare / Queen dialogue, then each character is introduced one at a time to music, and a projected name title. They each dance to their music and name projection. The last will be Falstaff and followers who ascend on the lift already carousing.
The programme has an essay by the added “Physical Comedy Director,” Toby Park. I found myself agreeing with every word. Falstaff had been played by Will Kemp in Henry IV.
As a skilled playwright crafting material for an ensemble of players, and writing to their strengths, Shakespeare must have known that too tight a framework would constrain Kemp. He must have known that the skills that so delighted their audience would be best served by a robust framework of situation and character that gave the arch clown a playground on which to cavort, pirouette, gurn, satirise regional accents, take the piss out of the drunken heckler at the front and flirt outrageously with the blushing (and totally delighted)ladies in the upper gallery. Toby Park, RSC programe 2018
Toby Park is from Skymonkey, specializing in physical comedy, and this production is an exhibition of every aspect. Every single character in the play has significant comic business. I don’t think I’ve heard such continual laughter at the RSC before.
Every part has humour: L to R: Parson Hugh (David Acton), Pistol (Afolabi Alli), Bardolph (Charlotte Josephine), Nym (Josh Finan)
Justice Shallow is a touch effete, as well as accident prone. His nephew, Slender has amazing teeth, is as thick as two short planks, and gets slapped by Shallow A LOT. And very convincingly – one slap was right by us. Sir Hugh the parson gets terrific audience participation singalong with Bread of Heaven. Mistress Anne has a puppet poodle with animated tail, an iPhone and later gets to do a toddler tantrum. Young Fenton, Anne’s swain, enters to resounding triumphant music at all times and usually poses then falls flat on his face. Beginning to end, it’s a riot. It’s as broad as you can do Shakespeare, but then with the prose it lends itself to added interaction, lines and changed words.
L to R: Dr Caius (Jonathan Cullen), Justice Shallow (Tim Samuels), The Hostess of The Garter (Katy Brittain), Master Page (Paul Dodds)
Shakespeare seemed freed by the prose and speed to do things differently, probably embroidering remembered events from Stratford. At the start Justice Shallow is after Falstaff for poaching and mentions the crest of the landowner as having “luces” (pike) which Parson Hugh pronounces “louses.” This was the crest of Sir Thomas Lucy’s family near Stratford and legend has it that Shakespeare was caught poaching on their estate as a youth and banished from the area. Shakespeare’s daughter, Anne, was courted by a local physician, just as is Anne Page here.
Falstaff is the swaggering and knighted Londoner thinking he can gull these suburban / provincial middle class people. He gets his comeuppance, and Shakespeare with his feet in both London and Stratford knew the prevailing attitudes of Londoners to those outside the capital. I’m reminded (again) of a neighbour who installed central heating in Dorset. He was a Londoner and used to tell me that he was making a fortune out of all these thick Dorset yokel plumbers working on contract. Five years later he was bankrupt and all those yokels were still going.
In a major cut (sadly) we lose William Page, the younger brother of Anne, and his Latin lesson from Parson Hugh is a wonder of misheard words by Mistress Quickly, based on Shakespeare’s schooldays (The boy is named William … geddit?) Still, they never slacken pace and William is an obvious piece to lose given an extended Barbican run, because juveniles require chaperones and multiple casting.
Terry Hands who directed the play fifty years ago also disagrees with the naysayers on the play:
We discover through rehearsal that the text, albeit in prose, has a richness of imagery, a sureness of effect commensurate with the fullest period in Shakespeare’s writing. Such richness that the fourteen day period seems inconceivable. What seems more likely is that (he) refurbished an old “jealousy comedy” reworking its central character to fit Falstaff, or improvised, through performance, and with his actors several Stratford themes dear to his heart … The Merry Wives of Windsor is perhaps Shakespeare’s most professional play, worked out in performance and through performance and it still works in performance.
Terry Hands, introduction to Folio Society edition, 1974
The joy of this production is that it carries just that feel of being worked out in rehearsal with the physical work at the forefront. I’ll point back to those Coward examples. If you have the outline and characters in mind, you can write comedy fast.
The set design has two outline buildings, one Dr Caius’s house, the other, the Garter Inn. They revolve. Look out for detail … there is a skeleton in Dr Cauis’s attic. The buildings revolve to show interiors. A bar with beer pumps slides out. Incongruously a modern sign says “Resident Permits Only.” For the Ford house we get an Essex garden with large barbeque, sun beds, model flamingoes and steps leading down to a swimming pool.
Lez Brotherton gave one of the best designs of last year with the Wanamaker Playhouse Romantics Anonymous. Here he surpasses himself especially with costumes. They combine outrageous bling with Elizabethan touches, so that Master Page is in formal dark pinstripes which incorporate Elizabethan trunk hose (aka “pumpkin pants.”) – the online photos do not show it in full. This is a theme, so that Nym has a rugby shirt and socks, but trunk hose. Master Ford has jeans and a blingy silver doublet. The women have extraordinary costumes, usefully with Anne’s distinctive patterned thigh-length boots which helps the confusion during the Herne the Hunter scene at the end. Falstaff has a great number of costume changes, if anything getting funnier every time … and David Troughton must have to spend much of his off stage time getting changed. Actually the ever funnier costume is a pantomime dame touch, and no worse for being so. Falstaff has a priapic codpiece, used throughout but never funnier than when he hides under the sunbed and every time someone sits on the bed, his “direction” (as Mistress Quickly might call it, though she confuses the opposite way in the text) is compressed.
Fastaff in Love? Patrick Troughton as Falstaff, Beth Cordingley as Mistress Ford
I’ve said in previous reviews that the plum acting part is Master Ford (Vince Leigh), but with David Troughton as the best Falstaff I have ever seen there is no question that as Queen Elizabeth had intended, Falstaff is the male star. Troughton comes into this from playing the title role in Titus Andronicus and Gloucester to Sher’s King Lear. He has always been a superb comic actor also, and we still take A Very Peculiar Practice out of the DVD box to watch him as Dr Bob Buzzard from time to time. It was prescient in showing the GP as businessman. Best bits here might be Falstaff’s audience swim (you have to see it), or trying to get in the wheelie bin, or hiding under the bed, or mincing across stage as the Fat Woman of Brentwood (with a borrowed Dick Emery bit that had tears down my face). The original is the Witch / Fat Woman of Brentford, but Brentwood is in Essex.
Mistress Ford (Beth Cordingley) realizes her love letter is the same as Mistress Page’s (Rebecca Lacey)
The Merry Wives themselves are the female stars of course. The double act of Mistress Ford (Beth Cordingley) and Mistress Page (Rebecca Lacey) is unforgettable, I loved their “over-acting” shouting for Falstaff to overhear, and their mirrored gestures. Mistress Ford’s superb figure made perfect sense of Falstaff’s obsession. The costumes were a brilliant contrast … dressing gowns for the pool scene.
Vince Leigh as Master Ford
Vince Leigh was the jealous husband, Master Ford, and in his disguise as Brooks, became a Russian with false nose and glasses and accent. It is a great part, given the twin roles, and he makes the most of it. The two sudden arrivals and house searches are always key scenes.
Funny accents were always a keynote of the play with Parson Hugh’s Welsh (I maintain Shakespeare’s company had a resident funny Welshman) and Dr Caius’ hilariously OTT Frenchman. Brexit? Catastrophe! he mutters. Later, Mistress Quickly tries to address him with French menu items – I caught cassoulet but it’s a classic comedy routine … speaking to someone by reciting the international words from their language.
The best language joke was added. They need workmen to take away the industrial sized wheelie bin containing Falstaff, and we have Robuk (Steve Basaula) & Jan (Josh Finan). They jabber away in what sounds like either a made-up, or Eastern European language to each other. I was so busy watching them in their first half appearance. In the second half, where they reprise it, I noticed a very funny projected “translation” right up high. it must have been there in the first part too, but I missed it. Ah, well. Good reason to see it again even if I vastly prefer the Stratford RSC stage to the dreadful Barbican in London. (Note: What’s On Stage review points out that it is Polish and the text shows that they are working on their Ph.Ds. on Proust)
Where do you stop? The other great female roles are The Hostess of The Garter, played extremely lubriciously by Katy Brittain, and Mistress Quickly, plotting to help all three swains for money, played by Ishia Bennison. Karen Fishwick as Anne has dropped her Scots accent too. All first rate.
David Troughton as Falstaff after the wheelie bin and canal. Ishia Bennison as Mistress Quickly.
Then there’s music, and spot on sound effects. Many places where music started or sound effects came in were milked for comedy. I hadn’t realized (unusually) how dynamically and dramatically the lighting changes throughout until I looked at the RSC stills. That really is great lighting. I hadn’t even noticed the French tricolour effect as Dr Cauis limbers up for the duel.
Jonathen Cullen as Dr Caius, Steve Basuala as John Rugby
We couldn’t think of anything that could be improved.
I was surprised how short the encore was … just the one. If they’d come back on, I’m sure it would have been a rare RSC standing ovation (we were getting ready to stand ourselves), but house lights up right away. Coming out of the Swan doorway, a minivan with blacked out windows was by the stage door, engine running. Ah! A matinee. Escape for a couple of hours before the evening. I’d say that’s why they did not milk the applause. Much deserved respite.
It’s a fine example of the RSC at its flat-out best. Up there with my other RSC comedy favourites of recent years … A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for The Nation; Love’s Labour’s Lost / Love’s Labour’s Won, As You Like It (with Pippa Nixon), Taming of The Shrew (with Lisa Dillon) and indeed the brilliant 2012 production of this same play.
We watched (at full price) before press night. I’ll add ratings (see below), but before seeing them, I wonder how the press will take such broad comedy. I gave the 2012 RSC production five stars, and remember it in detail and fondly.
This one is even better. We have already booked tickets for the RSC live broadcast.
*****
LIVE RSC BROADCAST TO CINEMAS
Hard to judge. We knew the laugh points, and the slaps and pratfalls are hilarious live but somewhat less so on the cinema screen.
There was a three to four minute blank screen in the best Falstaff /Mistress Ford wooing scene at the end of the first part. We just lost it. Unforgivable. Another thirty second blank in the second half.
They totally screwed up the Herne the Hunter dance scene by having the camera waist up. Live, we know that three people have the “Anne Page” black and white thigh boots. The camera missed it entirely, which lost much of the point of the scene. Bad pre-planning.
While music sounded wonderful, sound recording was imperfect. In the BH2 Odeon (state of the art cinema) loud music pushed just over into distort a few times, I think when the music was picked up on actors mics. A few lines way out on the side entrances to the thrust stage were way below the normal volume balance and almost lost.
The Polish servants of Master Ford had subtitles to replace the projected titles we missed live (good binary joke) but in their second appearance they subtitled the first line and lost the rest entirely. Bad.
We picked up on lines we’d missed, a plus. Mistress Quickly’s garbled French is Voulez vous couchez avec cassoulet (echoing Lady Marmalade) and Dr Caius says Quelle catastrophe, Brexit! I hadn’t noticed comte being repeated as “the C word.”
Play as RSC live (down a star) ****
TECHNICAL: Transmission, camera work, sound … too many screw ups. **
LIVE BROADCAST: 12 September 2018
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON to 22 September 2018
LONDON SEASON: THE BARBICAN October 2018 to January 2019
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
I kind of guessed there would be negatives … and I recall my drama tutor in the late 60s explaining that very few actors have the skill and timing to emulate what Brian Rix did in farce. They all have those skills here. I read the surprising three star reviews. My opinion … 5 star … does not shift one iota. I can’t see why anyone would worry that they changed Brentford (then famed for its witch) to Brentwood. In a comedy script I’d write “He comes from (name a nearby rival town, or disliked suburb).” That’s what you do. We loved the “Essex” interpretation. Then again, we live in Poole and you don’t have to go far to see beaches, Bentleys and a bit of bling.
4 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ****
Ann Treneman, The Times ****
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times ****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ****
James Garrington, The Reviews Hub **** 1/2
3 star
Michael Billington, Guardian ***
Rosemary Waugh, The Stage ***
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage ***
The storytelling is clear, the knockabout comedy broad and unsubtle, and there’s a lingering sense of everything being aimed at the lowest common denominator, from Falstaff’s outrageous codpiece to the shocking pink wheelie-bin that replaces Shakespeare’s original laundry basket prop. But in the end, the relentless onslaught of visual, verbal and vulgar gags prevails, and the audience is won over by the sheer exuberance of everyone involved. It may not persuade the purists and it might not satisfy the sceptics, but it’s just possible that neither of these groups is the target audience. Michael Davies
Emily Champion, the 730 review, ***
Tom Hitchenor, Miro Magazine ***
2 star
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard **
OTHER PRODUCTIONS OF THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR:
The Merry Wives of Windsor – RSC 2012
The Merry Wives, Northern Broadsides 2016
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Globe 2019
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
Many of the cast also appear in this season’s MACBETH and in ROMEO & JULIET
DAVID TROUGHTON
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, RSC
King Lear, RSC 2016
PAUL DODDS
Romeo & Juliet, RSC 2018
Macbeth, RSC 2018 (Siward, Chamberlain)
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
Antony & Cleopatra, RSC 2017
Julius Caesar, RSC 2017
Timon of Athens, NT, 2012
BETH CORDINGLEY
Romeo & Juliet, RSC 2018
Love’s Sacrifice, RSC 2015
The Jew of Malta, RSC 2015
TIM SAMUELS
Macbeth, RSC 2018
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, RSC 2016
Othello, RSC 2015
Timon of Athens, National Theatre, 2012
KAREN FISHWICK
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, National Theatre, 2015
Romeo & Juliet, RSC 2018
ISHIA BENNISON
Romeo & Juliet, RSC 2018
A Mad World My Masters, RSC 2013
JONATHAN CULLEN
An Enemy of The People, Chichester 2016
[…] is what the RSC does so superbly: the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Merry Wives of Windsor (FOLLOW LINK TO REVIEW) With David Troughton as Falstaff, set in modern day Essex. Stunning design too. There’s a […]
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