*** REVIEW: The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, until 7th September
Woe betide the sequel that sucks. Specifically designed to disprove the old adage that there’s no such thing as a safe bet, the sequel is a calculated – some might say, cynical – manoeuvre to ensure that as many of the odds as possible are stacked in your favour. If the dice roll wrong all involved are most likely on their uppers and out but more often than not things do work out. Of the top box office draws at the cinema over the past decade for example, only five out of 60 weren’t sequels created on the risk-averse premise that viewers who have already proven themselves enamoured of a certain franchise are likely to come back for more. Of the five originals, Barbie’s sensational success was accounted for, in part, because everyone knew the characters through the dolls so it was new but not new, so to speak. The golden ticket - fresh but familiar.
Many cineasts bemoan the domination of the superhero sequels, Martin Scorsese going so far as declare that they aren’t really films at all but some cheap, modern-age plague upon artistry. But the sequel isn’t a recent phenom. I’m wittering on about this because Merry Wives is a sequel. The main character, Sir John Falstaff, was resurrected from Henry IV, Parts I and II.
The story goes that, just as Queen Elizabeth II let it be known that she considered the stiff-as-a-board actor George Lazenby as her preferred choice to replace the exiting Sean Connery as James Bond – a misstep as he bombed as 007 in, ironically enough, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – so her predecessor in the Liz line, the first good Queen Bess, having enjoyed Shakespeare’s Henry IV, suggested – nay, insisted – that our playwright revive Sir John and do something romantic with him for her amusement. I doubt the bard took much persuading. To decline might have proven perilous – just look what happened to poor Sir Walter Raleigh when he stepped out of line. And the fact is that loveable rogues are near as dammit to a shoo-in. So it’s her ancient madge we have to thank for tonight’s entertainment, a Tudor Better Call Saul to Henry’s Breaking Bad or a post-Plantagenet Frasier to Henry’s Cheers if you will.
John Hodgkinson is the RSC’s third brilliant Sir John in 12 years, lumbering in the mighty shoes of Desmond Barrit (2012) and David Troughton (2018). Hodgkinson plays him as a besuited suave chancer roaming the updated suburban estates for what he assumes are easy pickings in the pair of titular wives who he plans to bed then blackmail. He’s an odious but somewhat adorable rascal, no match whatsoever for Samantha Spiro’s Mistress Page and Siubhan Harrison’s Mistress Ford. These two have got the measure of his mischief and their scheming to bring him to disgrace provides the plays principal pleasure. They’re both terrific fun.
Shazia Nicolls is fantastic as Mrs Quickly, the fixer with more rabbit than Sainsburys, and Patrick Walshe McBride makes a top fop out of Slender. Jason Thorpe’s ‘Allo Allo’ Frenchman Dr Caius is silly enough too if you can get over the fact that this racial stereotyping stuff is a bit tiresome nowadays. Ditto Ian Hughes’ Sir Hugh Evans, the word-garbling Welsh scapegoat.
Richard Goulding drives himself sympathetically nuts as the suspicious Master Ford, the sight of him raving like a loon frenetically rooting through the laundry basket in search of the interloping Sir John one of the show’s most mirthsome set-pieces.If you’re new to the play I’ll warrant you may find it a bit hectic and baffling at times. Director Blanche McIntyre has the cast cantering through at such a pace and volume that detail like plot and characterisation sometimes fall by the wayside. When it all does calm down, though, McIntyre has devised some splendid new comic touches. Hodgkinson chugging one, then a second, pint after barely recovering from being dumped in the Thames - "you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down” - gets a resounding cheer. So does the bit where the wives, over-acting their faked alarm that Falstaff, whose belly is poking through the curtains behind which he’s concealed, corpse, break down into giggles and for a second or two, just can’t go on.
Fab too are the fellows straining to shift the basket of stinking laundry with the hefty Falstaff hidden inside while Sir Hugh surreptitiously pockets a pair of ladies’ knickers. And you don’t want to miss Hodgkinson tottering about disguised as the Old Woman of Brentford (“I was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow.”)Overall I’d say this production satisfies but lacks a little sparkle. The lovers of the sub-plot – Tara Tijani’s Anne Page and John Leader’s Fenton are cute enough but there’s not a lot of fizzle and the nippers normally hired to pinch Sir John during the Herne The Hunter dupe have been replaced by a motley rabble dressed, for some weird reason, as extras from Star Wars. It feels as if effort’s lacking in making much of the play’s supporting cast. Take Bardolph for instance. This production shows scant appreciation of the fictional character who appears more than any other in Shakespeare’s plays - four to Falstaff’s three. He’s a drunk, born of drunks, with a drinker’s red nose, a handy wit and a fully-realised sidekick to Sir John. He is eventually hanged in Henry V for looting. Quite a character, then, but you wouldn't know it from this Merry Wives. Here Bardolph’s just a scene-shifter among other scene-shifters, an anonymous necessity moving the action along.
OK, so these are minor quibbles about minor characters but I did leave wondering what on earth everyone's got against young people these days. I abhor but understand the panicking Tories chasing the grey-just-this-side-of-the-grave vote by demonising anyone in their teens as listless loafers who need a spell in the army to shape ‘em up just like in the ‘good old days', but I can’t say I expected similar from the RSC. The only false note struck in the recent marvellous Buddha Of Suburbia was when they depicted the punks as unconvincingly violent yobbish morons played by cast members way too old. And now Merry Wives has chosen to represent Sir Jack’s rascally retinue as slobbish caricatures of English football hooligans. The scenes like the opener, where they are careering around being brainless, and the bit where they chant "Enger-land Enger-land” and get the audience to sing along to Sweet Caroline are pitiful, the cast members visibly overaged to play youths, the mob scenes pandering to cliche.
McIntyre might have staged them this way to dish out the same outmoded racist treatment to the English as the play does to the French, Welsh, Germans and Irish etc but, as so eloquently expressed by the erudite teens interviewed recently by the Herald about the Tory conscription plan, it’s insulting for the young to be perceived and treated this way. Which is a shame because it somewhat sours this superior senior silliness.
