The Merry Wives of Windsor

Mind you, it's a modest production, filmed in a 99 seat theatre, the Globe Playhouse, 1107 North Kings Road West Hollywood, operated by the Shakespeare Society of America for a while, after they had been evicted from their mansion in West Hollywood in 1972. Today the building houses a cinema, I believe.

As said, the production is modest but still enjoyable. Grahame fans in particular will probably appreciate this, as there aren't many recordings of her doing stage performances, and here we have decent rendition of a complete play at least. Myself, knowing that she would have liked to do more Shakespeare, I was quite glad to be able to watch this appearance of hers, made in her hometown and not long before her untimely death.

This might be the only time on record that Master William Shakespeare brought one of his characters back by popular demand. Just like Walt Disney did with Davy Crockett.

It is said that Queen Elizabeth was so taken with the outrageous character of Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, both parts that she requested of the Bard that he bring him back in another play. Even though in Henry V, Shakespeare had made mention of the sad death of the merrymaking Falstaff. But back then continuity counted for nothing when you get a royal request.

This television production pretends it's nothing else than a photographed stage play, we are told by host John Houseman that this is how Elizabethan audiences would have seen The Merry Wives Of Windsor at the Globe Theater.

Leon Charles is the blustering Falstaff who is now way too old for tall tales of battlefield heroism, so now he's switched to the field of romance where he boasts of tales of conquests, especially among the married women. Where he's now settled in Windsor, Falstaff tries wooing two married women at once, Mistresses Ford and Page. Of course everybody gets on to him real fast, but the play is one long running joke of how they can cure him of his boastfulness. A tall order indeed since no less than the Prince Hal could do that in both parts of Henry IV.

The women are played by Valerie Seelie-Snyder and movie queen Gloria Grahame. I have to say that Grahame does not come over like everyone's favorite nymphomaniac as she did in her prime Hollywood years. In this American cast her accent did not stand out.

As this is an American production it's all right, but not the equal of what the BBC did. Or what Orson Welles did in Chimes At Midnight. Still it's a nice introduction to the Bard, it's certainly made me want to see Anthony Quayle as Falstaff again in the BBC Merry Wives of Windsor.

There isn't much call for the Merry Wives out there, and this is one of your few options. The makers have just filmed a stage performance with no audience (too bad--an audience would have helped get the viewer into stage mode). This is apparent from the sparse mock-Tudor set, the overblown makeup (Slender's makeup looks like he's been hit in the face with a bowl of porridge and Bardolph's supposed pockmarks look like a deep tan) and the exaggerated acting. With one notable exception, the actors all seem to be playing the part of actors playing at Shakespeare. Granted, it's low comedy with plenty of slapstick but even at that, there is very little convincing performance. The director has worked very hard at thinking up little bits of business which provide amusement, and the fight choreography is wonderfully ridiculous, but this does not cover the fact that the actors frequently don't know how they are supposed to be reacting to each other. There are some very odd accents going on here: Dr. Caius is clearly French, but you would be hard pressed to spot the Welsh parson Sir Hugh as a Welshman The exception is Lisa Barnes as Anne Page, who is very persuasive at all times.

The editing, such as it is, is crude, with the actors' faces noticeably changing expression from one shot to the next.

An introduction and conclusion by John Houseman was included with my DVD. I strongly recommend skipping this completely.

All in all, it could serve as an introduction to the play and is not unwatchable. That's as excited as I can get about it.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is not one of Shakespeare's very best, but I do find it amusing and fun. I found this performance to be the opposite though. It is saved by Lisa Barnes' sparkling Anne Page and Dixie Tymitz's conniving Mistress Quickly as well as a few amusing directorial touches. Other than that it is extremely lacking in a lot of areas. The settings lack the sumptuous quality I like to see, if anything it did look very stark a lot of the time. The crude editing didn't help matters either. The costumes aren't so bad, but there is little interesting about them at the same time, some of them are very drab. The make-up was ridiculously overblown, Slender and Bardolph fare worst and Sir John Falstaff has a very grotesque appearance even for the character. The stage direction on the whole didn't engage, the slapstick came across as clumsy instead, the fight sequences is ridiculous and you could tell by the aimless gestures and the dull chemistry that the actors did not know how to interact with one another and everything felt under-rehearsed and amateurish. Consequently, it felt so leaden and so devoid of life. The rest of the acting is poor, Leon Charles blusters his way through his role as Falstaff with no nobility or subtlety, Valerie Seelie-Snyder and Addison Randall are dull, Lyle Stephen doesn't seem to have a clue what he is doing looking bemused a lot of the time and Caius and Sir Hugh are performed with some odd and out-of-place accents. So all in all, not a complete shambles but not recommended at all. 3/10 Bethany Cox