Theatre Review
The Globe Theatre presents The Merry Wives of Windsor
photo by Manuel Harlan by William Shakespeare Directed by Christopher Luscombe
The Globe Theatre Until 5 October
A review by David Hermann for EXTRA! EXTRA!
There she is, the mother of Sit-Com. Whether Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor hastily, and solely to delight Queen Elizabeth by placing one of her favourite characters, Sir John Falstaff, in a series of ludicrous predicaments; whether this, certainly the Bard’s flattest comedy, has received one scholarly battering after another; whether you like it or not, the “Wives” is crucial to our understanding of the history of English humour, a fact to which Christopher Luscombe’s production at the Globe is fully alive. In the programme - even by Globe standards a gloriously exhaustive document - freelance scholar Nick de Somogyi points out the obvious references to the play in the Fawlty Towers episode The Kipper and the Corpse. But what must strike anyone with the dubious privilege of being familiar with the Carry On Series of films is that this productionis more akin to Gerald Thomas’s stack of low-budget thigh-slappers than it is to anything else. It’s a perilous pileup of tear-inducing farce, shameless double entendres and gratuitous slapstick. And it’s good. It’s really, really good, and I’m not ashamed to say it. Alright, I am, but I shouldn’t be - because this fast-paced and artfully executed production achieves something of rare beauty. Eleven years since its reconstruction the Globe has managed to draw a special sort of audience, one that doesn’t usually go to the theatre. It has become the best possible kind of tourist attraction, a fact that it recognises without compromising its artistic integrity. When you go to see a play there, you don’t do so in the company of perpetually frowning men and women with untidy hair and odd socks who scribble in black leather notebooks while ostentatiously suppressing yawns. In addition to the English-speaking busloads of healthy looking country folk carted in from the far reaches of the British Isles, you sit (or mostly stand) next to jolly Germans in waterproof anoraks who hand each other homemade sandwiches with a conspiratorial wink, incessantly astonished Japanese families who raise their hands to their faces when Falstaff appears in the guise of a fat lady, Spanish girls who whistle in appreciation of a young actor’s codpiece and glamorous Egyptian women who simultaneously blush and beam under their headscarves when the action takes a turn for the unambiguously sexual. In short, last night’s performance was completely sold out to what seemed like a handpicked comprehensive delegation of the United Nations, and I challenge you to give me an example of a greater and more beautiful theatrical achievement than to engage an audience as diverse and largely unfamiliar with the play’s language - let alone the Elizabethan grammar - so completely from start to finish over a period of almost three hours. This production of The Merry Wives of Windsor transcends all boundaries by enhancing Shakespeare’s deceptively shallow romp with a highly sophisticated language everybody understands, that of physical comedy - to call such astounding precision Slapstick would mislead. (Even though it is essentially Slapstick, just very well done!) Christopher Luscombe, his assistant director Sarah Norman and movement director Glynn MacDonald have managed to endow their production with countless moments Nigel Hess has opted to compose a score that, although performed almost entirely on traditional instruments, is Elizabethan only at its heart, with modern flourishes left, right and centre and a distinct whiff of Jazz. The same sense of thoughtful, jazzy freedom applies to the magnificent efforts of the costume-department, which includes, somewhat regrettably, too many names to list here. The garments are mostly Elizabethan with some very garish enhancements in colour, until the final Act takes us into the woods and the whole affair explodes into ravishing madness with the entire cast dressed as fairies in the most gorgeously outlandish arrangements appropriated from stone-age loincloths to Noh-masks (carried off with professional Noh-movement as a matter of course), to straw-skirts, to I don’t know what else. A veritable feast for the eyes. While the (possibly historic) performances of Christopher Benjamin as Falstaff, Serena Evans and Sarah Woodword as Mistresses Page and Ford, respectively, stand out quite clearly by virtue of the characters’ dramatic significance, it would be unfair to the rest of this splendid ensemble to shine too bright a light on these three. Everyone, from Andrew Havill as Frank Ford to Otto Farrant or Harry Manton as the fat Knight’s page, excelled beyond what one expects from this collection of stock characters. It’s a romp, a riot, a guilty pleasure, a must-see and so much more. I implore you not merely to see this production before all available tickets are snapped up, but, while you’re there, to reduce your blinking to a minimum lest you miss even a split second of this incredibly rich piece of work.
Box Office 020 7401 9919
Tickets £33, £27, £20 Restricted View £15 Standing £5
Copyright © EXTRA! EXTRA All rights reserved
|
|
uzens