The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s bawdy bedroom farce reprising Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV (apparently at the request of Elizabeth I), requires full-throttle commitment from its players to work. Egged on by director Phillip Breen, whose vision includes covering the entire stage and a goodly portion of the audience in a shower of underwear, the cast of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new production more than meets the task. The result is a raucous, ribald, utterly ridiculous entertainment of the type we sorely need to escape the grim course of world events.
The paper-thin setup: Close friends Mistress Page and Mistress Ford set out to humiliate the buffoonish rouge Falstaff after discovering he is attempting to woo them both with written declarations of love identical save for the recipient’s name. In pretending to be receptive to Falstaff’s advances, the women spark jealousy in their husbands, especially Master Ford.
Further complicating matters: The Pages are set to marry off their daughter, Anne, but all three are set on different suitors. Delicious chaos ensues.
Everyone here understands the assignment and tackles it with alacrity, but Issy van Randwyck and Ora Jones (Mistresses Ford and Page, respectively), along with Timothy Edward Kane (Master Ford), Nate Burger (Dr. Caius) and Jason Simon (Falstaff), take the proceedings to delirious comedic heights.
Kane and van Randwyck, in particular, are so consistently funny throughout that it’s hard not to laugh whenever you look at them. And Burger goes full Monty Python in his over-the-top mockery of the French as Anne’s most impassioned and off-kilter suitor. His butchery of the English language is truly a thing of beauty.
Jokes about bodily fluids abound, including the sexually suggestive popping of Champagne corks, and the story is about as sophomoric as they come. But as it unfolds, the laughs just get bigger and bigger.
When comedic force Paul Oakley Stovall, who essayed a Malvolio for the ages three years ago on this very stage in Twelfth Night, is maybe the sixth-funniest person onstage, you know you’ve got a winning entertainment on your hands.
This Merry Wives of Windsor is silly fun, brilliantly done. If you have a taste for farce, this is a Falstaffian meal not to miss.
The Merry Wives of Windsor runs through May 3 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Kyle Flubacker.
