Review: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s Globe

They’ve wallpapered Shakespeare’s Globe! Striking, art nouveau florals cover the stage and pillars for this The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Sean Holmes and thoughtfully designed by Grace Smart. It’s a big choice that creates a weirdly paradoxical space: both domestic and courtly, indoor and outdoor. Yet that is perhaps a suitable backdrop for this play as it draws together a variety of socially disparate characters and throws them into a dramatically intimate – and often ridiculous – melting pot together. Smart’s beautiful costumes, based on traditional Elizabethan dress, are really helpful as they draw groups of characters together and signal relationships so they are more easily identifiable.

Centring on Sir John Falstaff (George Fouracres) of the ‘Henries’ fame, the play is perhaps not the most challenging of Shakespeare’s works but is entertaining and comedic, with some beautifully silly lines and scope for merriment. The convoluted plot sees couples dally with cuckoldry, dissembling and deceit, with much frantic running around or hiding from others. It’s definitely the writing that does much of the heavy lifting in the first act.

There’s some real talent on the stage. Jolyon Coy goes large as jealous husband Ford. He creates an at once ridiculous but creepily repugnant character that makes visible a touch of darkly human menace, bringing impact and mindfulness to an otherwise quite farcical play. His delivery is appropriately bold for the outdoor space and he does an admirable job of addressing the audience at all levels. Katherine Pearce as Mistress Ford and Emma Pallant as Mistress Page also offer excellent range in their performances. Pearce’s surprising response to Falstaff’s clearly disingenuous advances is beautifully poignant, telling of an undervalued wife yearning for attention, and giving additional depth to the theme of love as a transactional process.

Largely though – and that’s an important word – there’s a lot that could go bigger. Key to this is the role of Falstaff, which is surprisingly underplayed. Fouracres is a fine actor, but his character is neither fat enough to match the “two yards about” of Shakespeare’s text and give the Bard’s old jokes resonance, nor tawdry enough to make us really dislike him, nor ridiculous enough to be a loveable rogue. There’s opportunity for so much physical humour here that just isn’t taken up — I’d love to see him popping up from the basket he’s hiding in and being slapped down, fidgeting behind the curtain and building tension by really risking discovery, and generally engaging with the audience far more.

Interestingly, the latter part of the play is almost like stepping into a different one, with the whole atmosphere transformed by the ‘fairy disguise’ section. Accompanied by enchanting, ethereal music, under the superb musical direction of Zands Duggan, there’s absolute magic on the stage that builds a tangible sense of change occurring, in advance of Falstaff’s rather brutal comeuppance.

Come the conclusion, it’s an odd choice to end a comedy with no laugh, but it does leave us with a sense that something has changed for everyone involved before the final jig, which is itself a delightful celebration of diverse company.

Directed by: Sean Holmes
Design by: Grace Smart
Composed by: Frew
Musical Director: Zands Duggan

The Merry Wives of Windsor plays at Shakespeare’s Globe until Saturday 20 September.