Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor is an interesting watch in these modern times. On one hand, in the play, political incorrectness is rife – the French and Welsh are ridiculed through characters Dr. Caius (Josh Wedge) and Sir Hugh Evans (Alice Evans) – with lots of ‘Allo, Allo’ accents and jokes about Welsh cheese. And cringingly, there’s fat-shaming aplenty.
On the other hand, women take charge: Mistresses Page and Ford (Alison Cook and Fleur Yerbury-Hodgson) are the merry wives of the title who take great delight in exposing the absurdities of male pride, vanity and jealousy.
They both realise that lazy, scheming Falstaff (Richard Readshaw) is attempting to seduce them for financial gain, and spend the rest of the play humiliating him for his efforts, through a series of ever more amusing, elaborate and cruel practical jokes.
And in the sub-plot, quiet but smart daughter Ann Page (Neve Gascoyne) calmly side-steps her parents’ choices of husband in order to marry who she wants.
Siege Theatre’s current outdoor production of the play at Oxford Castle rather refreshingly doesn’t make use of the castle as a natural backdrop as every other production I’ve seen at this location has.
Instead, as befits the chosen late 1950s setting, we get a row of brightly painted suburban front doors, which the actors romp in and out of, dressed in their blazers or pleat-skirts, as Elvis and Cliff provide the soundtrack.
Tom Wilson’s apoplectically jealous Master Ford threatens to steal the show on occasion as does his crafty, fun-loving wife (the afore-mentioned Yerbury Hodgson). And Readshaw’s Falstaff is, appropriately and satisfyingly, the very definition of the word pompous, and always the centre of many slapstick moments – the funniest and most famous of which are when he’s shut in the laundry basket in the mistaken belief that the enraged Master Ford is after him.
‘Gonna lock her up in a trunk’ sang Cliff in Living Doll somewhat presciently during the interval – my, how times change! Well done to director Beth Burns and the cast for such an amusing and thought-provoking evening. A satisfying final offering to this summer’s Oxford Shakespeare Festival.
Edward Bliss
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR by Siege Theatre runs at Oxford Castle until August 16. Book here https://www.oxfordcastleandprison.co.uk/events/event/oxford-shakespeare-merry-wives-of-windsor/
