Merry Wives – The Musical (RSC)

It would take a churl, a very ‘dried pear’, to cavil at Gregory Doran’s musical adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which offers reasons enough ‘to be cheerful’. The play, reputedly written to order for Elizabeth I, ranks with Shakespeare’s slightest, while Falstaff, fat though he be, is but a shadow of the colossal creation, the force of nature, who bestrides Henry IV Parts I and II.

Simon Callow, making his RSC acting debut, following the withdrawal due to injury of Desmond Barrit, initially underwhelms. That voice is present and correct of course, and the art informing his performance is never in doubt, but he doesn’t seem to loom over the proceedings as he ought.

And then you remember that the Falstaff of the history plays is not present here. That Falstaff would never be so gulled and Callow’s performance, shaped at short notice, seems even more admirable. This is soft-focus England, something hinted at in Stephen Brimson Lewis’ set, an idyll of a pristine street of timbered buildings, smoke curling above, giving way to undulating meadows.

The production is cast to the hilt: aside from Simon Callow, there’s (Dame) Judi Dench; Alistair McGowan; Haydn Gwynne and Alexandra Gilbreath. Also making their presence felt areSimon Trinder, a star of the recent RSC Spanish Golden Age season, Paul Chahidi, unobtrusively excellent of late and terrific here as mad Dr Caius, and Ian Hughes as Sir Hugh Evans, a Welsh Parson.

In the programme notes, Doran promises ‘a romp’, something the production, for the most part, delivers in spades. It’s beautifully staged and excellently played – yet it doesn’t always sweep one up as one feels it should. That this is so seems partly down to the music by Paul Englishby. The numbers wittily pastiche West End hits like Cats and Stomp, as well as opera and country & western. For every palpable winner, however, there are two less sparkling melodies.

But this being a Doran production, the experience is never less than rewarding and it will undoubtedly be a hit. Look out for Brenda O’Hea’s wicked Russell Brand impersonation.

– Pete Wood