[In the following review, Shurgot discusses Lillian Groag's 2001 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, remarking that the production was a “three-hour marathon of sight gags, pratfalls, and petty stuff.”]

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2001 season was unusual in that the four Shakespeare plays presented were all types of “comedy”: The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, and the rarely seen Troilus and Cressida were staged in the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre. Shakespeare's final “comedy of forgiveness,”¹The Tempest, was staged in the indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre. The productions were as different as the plays themselves, offering spectators a broad sampling of Shakespeare's, and the Festival's, comic artistry.

Lillian Groag's production of Merry Wives became a three-hour marathon of sight gags, pratfalls, and petty stuff. The set and costumes were overly Elizabethan; several characters, especially Shallow, Hugh Evans, Slender, and the merry wives and their husbands, wore elaborate costumes that seemed designed primarily to out-do each other. The set featured two brightly colored doors stage left and right, suggesting the twin doors of an Elizabethan theatre, and the leaded casement windows on the upper level, which were used often, sported ample flowerbeds.

The upper stage, which is reached by two spiraling staircases, was Falstaff's chamber in the Boar's Head. Two features of this upper room dominated this production. Stage right hung a large tapestry of Dan Donohue, last season's Henry V. Stage left was a tall mirror into which Falstaff gazed every time he needed some encouragement or self-assurance. Every time Falstaff gazed into this mirror he saw not a reflection of himself but rather an idealized “portrait” of himself: a much younger, slimmer man wearing clean duplicates of Falstaff's own ill-fitting and filthy doublet and hose who sang arias from Mozart's Don Giovanni, as if Mozart's swaggering lover were the fat knight's alter (later) ego. This time warp notwithstanding, the contrast between Henry's dismissal, “I know thee not old man,” which boomed throughout the theatre the first time Falstaff gazed at the King's tapestry, and Don Giovanni's stunning portrait and seductive voice, captured the play's farcical center: the discrepancy between Falstaff's bloated self-image (Ray Porter's fat knight could not see his own knee!), and his mechanical, egotistic, hopeless pursuit of sex among these witty Elizabethan country women.

Equally mechanical, and equally elaborated, were Master Ford's jealous pursuits of Falstaff's supposed liaisons with his wife. Sounding like a petty Othello, Richard Howard bellowed his revenge against Falstaff and led two frightfully noisy invasions of his own house. This farcical swat team, comprised of geriatrics like Justice Shallow and Hugh Evans, who exhausted themselves trying to climb the stairs, and rambunctious clowns like Slender and Simple, spent way too much time running helter-skelter all over both levels of the stage while stupidly waving their arms overhead. Slender and Simple became so enraptured with the chase that they continued to run back and forth well after Ford had abandoned his search. Falstaff's two narrow escapes from Ford were cleverly staged. Mistress Ford's servants John and Robert cringed before strenuously lifting Falstaff stuffed into the laundry basket. Just before Ford entered his house for the second search, Porter tried frantically to stuff his huge, pliant belly into a small, square container downstage right. When that didn't work, he opened a small, wooden box sitting on a table, only to shake his head at his own desperate situation. His escape as “my maid's aunt of Brentford” prompted more mad dashes all over the stage, with Falstaff rolling and then Slender leaping over the stage into the audience to escape Ford's wrath. Mere matter for a May morning.

The Windsor Forest finale featured Herne's oak rising from beneath the stage. As the Windsor residents played fairies and satyrs, Falstaff shivered, his huge belly making him roll side to side even as he hilariously tried to remain invisible. Porter delivered Falstaff's confession, “I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass”² perfectly flat, creating a marked contrast between him now and his flamboyant escapades throughout the play. No Don Giovanni here. His adventures over, Falstaff glanced up to his former lodging above the Boar's Head. His alter ego now gone, a fairy spirit pulled down Henry's portrait, and Falstaff disappeared into the Ashland night, no more to roam the halls and forests of Windsor.

Notes

1. See Robert G. Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.

2. All textual references are to David Bevington, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 4^th edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.