The Merry Wives (Viaduct Theatre)

In Northern Broadsides‘ lively and inventive version of The Merry Wives of Windsor the merry wives have no connection with Windsor – nor, for that matter, with Elizabethan England. In Lis Evans’ stylish, economical and frequently comic designs, it all happens in the 1920s among the tennis and golf-playing bourgeoisie of a Yorkshire town which possesses a river and a forest, essential for the serial humiliations of Sir John Falstaff. The transformation works well, not least in the imaginative details: the sporting equipment as weapons, the Charleston to round off the revels.

The flat-capped similarity of some of the lower-class characters doesn’t help in the early scenes amid a confusion of minor parts and a short-lived law-suit, but, once the main plot surfaces, Barrie Rutter‘s pacy production hits its stride. Falstaff, the disreputable and impoverished knight, sets about the seduction of two prosperous local wives who see through him and play their own tricks on both Falstaff and the manically jealous husband of Mistress Ford.

Rutter’s Falstaff makes no attempt to play on the audience’s sympathy or to strain for new levels of rotesquerie: he is simply a vain, pathetically deluded, fat old man – and very funny. The wit and flashes of self-knowledge occasionally surface, but mostly we laugh at him, rather than with him. The opening flirtation with Becky Hindley’s Mistress Ford, for instance, is beautifully played by both, but she is the one in control of the situation.

Hindley and Nicola Sanderson (Mistress Page) form a formidable duo as the merry wives, whether enjoying the social whirl of the tennis courts or collapsing into unlady-like laughter at their latest tricks. Their timing is exemplary and the characters are nicely differentiated, Sanderson somewhat the giddier, Hindley inclined to the sardonic. The other key character, Frank Ford, is played with mountainous rage and bewildered perplexity by Andrew Vincent.

The Merry Wives boasts twenty sharply differentiated characters and Broadsides’ production is strongly cast with sixteen actors and minimal doubling, though the love story that provides the climax to the play (Ann Page and Fenton) takes up so little stage time that Sarah Eve and Adam Barlow have also to serve as members of Falstaff’s gang.

Helen Sheals’ spryly busy Mistress Quickly is, literally and metaphorically, lighter on her feet than many in this role. Andy Cryer’s absurdly preening French doctor and John Gully’s pontificating Welsh preacher make the best possible case for Shakespeare’s national stereotyping. In an excellent ensemble full of well-played dupes and dopes Jos Vantyler brings a delightfully comic touch of fantasy to the role of Abraham Slender.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

The Merry Wives, in partnership with the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, runs at Hull Truck theatre from 8 -12 March and then tours the UK to the end of May.