Peter Viney's Blog

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Set & Costume by Robert Innes
Composer Tim Sutton

Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
Saturday 13th July 2024, 13.15

CAST

John Hodgkinson – Sir John Falstaff
Samantha Spiro- Mrs Page
Wil Johnson – George Page
Tara Tijani- Anne Page
Siubhan Harrison – Mrs Ford
Richard Goulding – Frank Ford
Shazia Nicholls – Mrs Quickly
Ian Hughes – Sir Hugh Evans
Jason Thorpe – Dr Caius
John Dougall- Shallow
Patrick Walsh McBride – Slender
Jessica Alade – Simple
John Leader- Fenton
Omar Bynon – Pistol
Yasemin Ozdemir- Nym
David Partridge – Bardoloph
Emily Houghton – Host of The Garter
Riess Fennell- Robert / Student
Yasemin Junqueira – Student / Ensemble
David Mara – Rugby
Tadeo Martinez – Robin

This takes us back to classic RSC repertory, with many of the same cast as The School For Scandal, playing on the same stage two days earlier. This is a plus for those of us seeing both plays on the same visit to Stratford.

Blanche McIntyre: The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of Shakespeare’s most underrated plays. Its mixture of comedy and vulnerability foreshadows great writers such as Alan Ayckbourn, and its farcical set pieces are the forerunners of classic sitcom. I’m setting the play in a contemporary small town, as I think its gossipy lack of privacy, its suburban values and its overheated town politics are timeless. I’ve wanted to direct The Merry Wives of Windsor for a long time.

It is consistently underrated, and she’s right. It is the forerunner of sitcom. And farce. It’s the Shakespeare play with the largest percentage of prose, it’s the one with the most female comic interaction, it’s a rarity outside the history plays in being set squarely in England (as is As You Like It), it’s a rarity in having a domestic setting. No lords, ladies, kings or queens in sight. Shakespeare knew that English audiences found Welsh and French accents hilarious. They still do. My favourite comedy will always be The Dream, but if I were young enough to direct, Merry Wives would be by second choice, ahead of even Twelfth Night and Much Ado. In the end, it always works. I’d say the same of Comedy of Errors, another underrated comedy.

It’s on a six year rotation at the RSC. 2012, 2018, 2024. The default is setting it now. This time they’ve gone even more precise. This is June / July 2024 with the Euros football championship in the background. We are seeing it on the Saturday before the England v Spain Final, and indeed the Garter Pub has a board with PIE SPORTS advertising England v Spain. Have they changed that board throughout the last few weeks with the next team on? Was it England v Netherlands a few days ago? Did Netherlands fit in the board? In the production photos, it’s England v Germany:

They’re lucky they didn’t run out of opponents, but will it work so well next week and through August? Nym, Falstaff’s buddy wears an England shirt with KANE 9. England flags are above the set. After the interval, they improvise getting us all to sing the England Euros song Sweet Caroline. That was fun. On the way out, an American confiding to her friend ‘I didn’t get the Neil Diamond reference …’ added to it.

I suspect they made a poor prediction. In a Euros taking place in Germany you would bet on the hosts reaching the final. Therefore the German horse con-men scene switches to German flags and the lads chanting Germany! But the hosts failed. They’re gone. The scene probably should be too – it never fits the story. It’s a sub plot that takes us nowhere, and it would trim five minutes to lose it. It could do with losing a few minutes overall too. It was a tad long for a comedy. I guess we lost five minutes when the below stage lift and trap door failed, and the stage manager had to come on and announce a technical hitch. As in The School For Scandal, the stage lift is used heavily for entrances and exits, with the advantage of bringing on (or rather ‘up’) a bed, or a sofa. It seems this year’s RSC toy.

There are small visual Windsor jokes around the set. The Pages live at Castle View House, which is #37 (the number of plays in the Complete Works). Characters cycle across the lawn under the sign CYCLISTS DISMOUNT (a true reference if ever there was one). There are references to Frogmore. The laundry basket (or rather trolley) is Crown Laundry.

Plot ? You can refer to the 2012 or 2018 reviews, but in brief. Sir John Falstaff is staying at a Windsor pub, The Garter, with his followers, who are a bunch of football yobs, Nym, Bardolph and Pistol. Nym is female. It doesn’t make any difference. He sees Mrs Page and Mrs Ford, wiggles his eyebrows and determines to seduce them. He does this by sending out identical love letters, which they compare and decide to revenge themselves on him. They will get triple revenge.

Mr and Mrs Page have a daughter, Anne. Mr Page is determined that she marry Slender, who is a weedy prat, and promoted by his older cousin, Shallow. Mrs Page wants her to marry Dr Caius a belligerent Frenchman and (here) a dentist. Anne however is in love with Fenton, and wants her own way. Mrs Quickly, who works for Dr Caius, takes money from all three suitors to promote their claims.

The plot is complicated by Mr Ford being a classic jealous husband. He wants to know whether his wife is loyal, so disguises himself as ‘Brooks’ and pays Falstaff to try and seduce her, which was Falstaff’s intent in the first place. Much comedy comes from Ford trying to find Falstaff in their house. That’ll do to place it.

There’s never ‘a best’ or shouldn’t be. I’ve seen three tremendous RSC Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaffs. John Hodgkinson adds height to girth. Literally a ‘towering performance.’ He is in a formal blue three piece suit, which I felt made the version after being thrown into the Thames even funnier. It’s said to be the bawdiest play, and after various pointed bawdy lines, he gave admonishing glances and head shakes to the audience for laughing. Then he got major applause for his drinking feat (say no more) and I couldn’t believe a man his size could do the dive into the laundry trolley – he got deserved huge applause for that too. Then there was rolling off the sofa onto the floor. There was the George Galloway miaowing (see I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here).

Then there was hiding behind the curtains unaware that his waistcoated belly was sticking through the gap. I can’t think that his Wise Woman of Brentford outfit could ever be bettered, nor his walk in it. They’re not giving away that massive laugh in production photos, wisely. He also got the poignancy right at the end, and topped it with a shrug. So a third unforgettable Falstaff.

The Fords and The Pages.

The merry wives of the title are Siubhan Harrison as Mrs Ford and Samantha Spiro as Mrs Page. They look perfect, more domestic than last time when they looked like football WAGs and had a health spa sequence. Both fit because this is suburbia. They work well together. The scene where Falstaff is hiding and they’re shouting to make him hear is a gift to female comedy actors. They do it with gusto.

It is a double act. That’s how it’s written.

Wil Johnston is Mr Page and Richard Goulding is Mr Ford. Both suffer from the lack of a strong unifying concept – in 2012 they were both hearty, beefy rugger fans. They never seem a pair of likely pals.

Mr Ford looks the part as himself, but we both thought the grubby mac, T-shirt and beanie cap disguise as Brooks were a lost costume opportunity. I’d costume “up” in class rather than “down.”

Tara Tijani as Anne Page and John Leader as Fenton have minor parts after their starring roles as Mrs Teazel and Charles Surface in The School for Scandal. You are left wanting to see more of them.

The three at the start of the play are Shallow (John Dougall), Slender (Patrick Walsh McBride) and Sir Hugh the Welsh parson(Ian Hughes).

There was a Frenchman, a Welshman and a thin gangly English bloke … stock characters. It’s clear that Shakespeare’s company had a Welsh comedian who said Look you a lot, and would have been Sir Hugh Evans in this. Patrick Walsh McBride does the thin tall gangly bloke. Judi Dench points out in Shakespeare – The Man Who Pays The Rent that there was a tall thin actor in Shakespeare’s company, John Sinklo who did Slender, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Christopher Sly in The Taming of The Shrew, then probably Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dr Pinch in Comedy of Errors. That’ll keep Patrick Walsh McBride busy for a few RSC seasons then. In the same chapter, Judi Dench (who played Anne Page) points out that with only two dozen lines, Anne has a definite character.

Patrick Walsh McBride dominates scenes, as he did as Backbite in School for Scandal. He plays the comedy of the wet and weedy Shallow outrageously large, and it’s all the better for it. There’s a lively pre-scene where the yobs get him drunk and push him around in a shopping trolley.

Sir Hugh entirely loses the schoolmaster Latin teaching scene (Act IV Scene 1) with Will Page (a character also lost). It was one dear to Shakespeare’s heart, I always thought, which is why the reluctant scholar is named Will. I was sorry to see it go, and would rather have kept it and eradicated the German “noblemen” intent on buying horses (or rather “horsepower” with motor bike helmets) (Act IV Scene 3). The rationale is clear. We have seen Falstaff off to be thrown in the Thames at the end of the first half. They don’t want to delay his reappearance in the second part.

Then there’s Dr Caius (Jason Thorpe) and a chavvy Mistress Quickly (Shazia Nicholls). Caius is a dentist now, and great use is made of the stage lift to ascend with a dentist’s chair and all the equipment. Rugby, the servant (David Mara), is now dressed as a dental assistant and is having a crafty kip on the chair when it appears from below. Caius will have a drink from the water spray and spit it out when he gets there. Simple (Jessica Alade)will be threatened with the dentist drill rather than a rapier. That’s another visual moment that they’re not going to plot spoil with production photos. Yes, by gar!, funny Frenchmen never cease to amuse. After Caius threatens Sir Hugh Evans to a duel, he does some lovely rapier exercises.

It’s a Royal Shakespeare Theatre habit or cliché to use the diagonal platform entrances to give pace, or rather an illusion of pace. Between scenes there’s much cross-crossing on bikes, pushing laundry trolleys, skipping (Slender). The laundry men have some tremendous wordless comic business with the trolley.

The trouble with the play, and it happens every time, is that it is so natural to set it in the present day. That works superbly right up until you’re confronted with the night time Herne The Hunter scene and dancing faeries. The best they got away with it at the RSC was when they set it as at Halloween, giving sense to the masks for the cast. It’s an essential scene too as it resolves the Anne Page suitors plot. Here we had a complex oak tree descend, we had green neon lit masks on the faeries, but it still stands out as jarring with the rest of the play.

We also thought it lost the pace just before the Herne scene started and in the early part. The thing about pace and cutting is that my companion, Karen, believes every comedy could be improved by cutting. In our years of writing video comedy scripts together, the script editors would politely suggest I make coffee while Karen wielded the scalpel if a vignette looked like over-running. Here I think she was right and that a few cuts here and there might enliven the end.

The RSC dance ending is a tradition. It sounded great. I looked up. Three horn players. Eight musicians altogether. Yet for the Herne dance sequence they had one wailing horn and a drum. In retrospect, they under-used the musicians.

Yes, wonderful, Not perfect in every aspect though. It is running to 7 September. If you book carefully you can see the School for Scandal on an adjoining day.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian *****
Rod Dungate, Reviews Gate *****

4 star
Hollie, Theatre & Tonic ****
Mark Johnson, BeyondThe Curtain ****

3 star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
Suzi Feahy, Financial Times ***
Michael Davies, Whats on Stage ***
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage ***
Nick Wayne, West End Best Friend ***
Raphael Kohn, All THat Dazzles ***

LINKS ON THIS BLOG
Most of the cast are in The School For Scandal.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
The Merry Wives of Windsor – RSC 2012
The Merry Wives, Northern Broadsides 2016
The Merry Wives of Windsor – RSC 2018
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Globe 2019
The Merry Wives of Windsor – RSC 2024
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Globe 2025

BLANCHE McINTYRE (director)
All’s Well That Ends Well, RSC 2022
Bartholomew Fair, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2019
The Winter’s Tale, Globe 2018
The Norman Conquests, Ayckbourn, Chichester 2017
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
The Two Noble Kinsmen, RSC 2016
Noises Off, Nuffield, Southampton, 2016
As You Like It, Globe 2015
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Brighton, 2015
The Comedy of Errors, Globe 2014
The Seagull, Headlong / Nuffield 2013

JOHN HODGKINSON
The Provoked Wife, RSC 2019 (Heartfree)
Venice Preserved, RSC 2019 (Senator Antonio)
The Country Wife, Minerva, Chichester 2018 (Pinchwife)
Twelfth Night, RSC 2017 (Sir Toby Belch)
Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2014 (Don Armado)
Love’s Labour’s Won RSC 2014 (Don Pedro)
Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, 2015 (Pierrepointe)
Love’s Labour’s Lost, RSC / Chichester 2016 (Don Armado)
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC / Chichester 2016 (Don Pedro)
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, 2017 (Tom Kettle)

WIL JOHNSON
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024
Jitney by August Wilson, Bath 2022 (Becker)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic 2017 (Claudius)

SAMANTHA SPIRO
Lady Windermere’s Fan, by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring 2018

SIUBHAN HARRISON
Me & My Girl, Chichester 2018
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024

JESSICA ALADE
As You Like It, Globe 2023
The Vortex, Chichester 2023
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024

RICHARD GOULDING
King Charles III by Mike Bartlett (Prince Harry)
King Charles III, TV version (Prince Harry)
A Mad World My Masters by Middleton, RSC 2013

DAVID MARA
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Brighton, 2015

IAN HUGHES
Strife, by Galsworthy, Chichester 2016

DAVID PARTRIDGE
One Last Push, by Chris Chibnall, Salisbury 2024

PATRICK WALSH McBRIDE
Present Laughter, Bath 2016
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024

JOHN LEADER
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024
The Four Seasons: A Reimagining, Wanamaker Playhouse 201§8

TARA TIJANI
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024

JOHN DOUGALL
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024
The Duchess of Malfi, Wanamaker 2014