The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of those plays you cannot really get wrong. It is the Shakespearian equivalent of Shepherd’s Pie: it contains enough comforting good bits to always be enjoyable. The trouble with these crowd pleasing plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another one – is complacency. It is all too easy to assume that the visual gags, comedy of misunderstandings, fat jokes, Welsh jokes, French jokes and cross dressing will do all the work for you. They do most of it for Christopher Luscombe at the Globe.
Luscombe is not to be accused of simply ‘banking on the good bits’ in a busy, unusually musical production on a stage extended across the pit via a snaking raised walkway, which divides the standing audience into two sections. Composer Nigel Hess has had free reign with the Globe’s musicians who often accompany the action on their beautifully authentic Elizabethan instruments, so much so that it is occasionally difficult to hear some of the actors.
Christopher Benjamin gives a pleasing, preening performance as Falstaff but the funniest character by far is George Page, masterfully portrayed by Michael Garner: his Page/Ford is a sort of Basil Fawlty figure whose frustration and jealousy cannot be contained within his gangly, grasshopper frame. Sarah Woodward and Serena Evans are very merry wives and Philip Bird does extremely well with the accent of the French Dr Caius.
The subplot with the rivals for Anne Page’s hand is somewhat overshadowed by Will Belchambers’ high camp Abraham Slender whilst Falstaff’s misadventure with the fairies in the forest looks a bit like the dress rehearsal of a school play.
There are a few lumps in the mash but no pie is perfect and this one is well worth sampling.
