The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
Tuesday 28th October - Saturday 1st November
Tuesday 4th November - Saturday 8th November 2008
Performances start 19:45
The fat knight Sir John Falstaff imagines that Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are both taken
with him and so, attracted as much by their husbands’ money as their personal charms, he
decides to woo them both. But the women are up to the old lecher’s tricks and turn the tables
on him with a series of humiliating assignations, midnight terrors and a very damp, extremely
smelly laundry basket. Gutsy, colloquial and bustling with vivid characters, The Merry Wives
of Windsor is a brilliantly constructed farce and the only comedy Shakespeare set in his native
land. It is also the ancestor of English
bourgeois comedy and gave birth to a tradition
that reaches down to the modern TV sitcom. To
highlight this aspect of the play we are setting
it in the 1920’s; the decade of the Ben Travers
Savoy Farces and home to the wonderful world
of P.G. Wodehouse.
The play itself bulges with wonderful characters
- Sir John Falstaff and his gang of cronies,
Pistol, Bardolph and Nym and Mistress Quickly
(all of whom featured in the Henry IV plays). A pathologically jealous husband, a pedantic
magistrate, a Welsh priest, an outrageous
French doctor, a most unlikely suitor, a pair of
star crossed lovers and many more – not to
mention those cheeky Merry Wives themselves.
There is mistaken identity, disguise, romance,
much running in and out of doors and plans
going awry – oh, far too much to put here.
You’ll just have to come and see for yourselves!
I am very fortunate to have a first rate cast of
22 bringing this play to life – some faces you
will have seen before and others you won’t!
So, see you in Windsor – it’s a hoot!
Pip pip.