Watching a Shakespeare play in the woods is a life experience everyone should have, and the opportunity is upon us once again as the Central Coast Shakespeare Festival returns to San Luis Obispo with the cool summer breezes.
As night falls, The Merry Wives of Windsor takes the Festival’s ornate two-story set—designed by none other than Cal Poly Professor Emeritus Al Schnupp—in the secluded canyon among the shadowy oaks at Filipponi Ranch, and a fictional world materializes before our eyes in the pastoral dusk.
Though one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Merry Wives puts on classic comedy with plenty of identity shifting, reality bending, and misdirected romance gone awry. The play features one of the Bard’s most favored characters, Sir John Falstaff, a drunken knave and roguish scoundrel of a knight that audiences can’t help but liking (to some extent) as his preposterous schemes to get money unfold before their eyes.
Falstaff is played with great Jack Black energy by Mark Klassen, who brings his entire being into the dance-like movements of the fun physical comedy he enacts. The subtle and blatant body language Klassen invests into his character keeps the play’s action moving, too.
The plot is simple for Shakespeare, which makes it very easy to follow, and in this play and production the language is easy to follow as well. Zoe Saba has edited the play into a much more digestible package that preserves the storyline while shortening the run time, which is just under two hours with an intermission. Even in its complete form, the play has an easily followed linear plot that is still rich enough to capture viewers’ attentions, and everything comes together nicely at the end (complete with comedy’s obligatory marriage).
Our partying ne’er-do-well of a knight is broke at the outset of the play, and he conceives a crude plan to woo not one, but two upstanding and well-off wives, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (skilled acting and comic performances by Kristie Siebert and Isabel Skene, respectively) in the town of Windsor. Falstaff hopes that if he is successful, he can reach their husbands’ finances through them, which will enable him to continue his dissolute lifestyle.
Get some camping chairs, bring some warm clothes, and get out to the woods at Filipponi Ranch to be magicked out of your everyday world . . .”
The wives quickly discover they’ve both received the same (laughable) letter from the vainglorious knight (who by the way, is also married), and decide to turn the tables on Sir John with a series of well-planned pranks and counter schemes to his primitive attempt at wooing and fleecing them. The post-prank interactions between Falstaff and Mistress Quickly (Sophie Rhiannon) are some of the most choice moments in the play—look out for them!
One of these pranks involves Falstaff at an illicit rendezvous in the woods at night and being swarmed by a host of night spirits. While there was good build-up to this scene, it could be played up with a much more dramatic reaction from our befuddled knight. It felt like a next-level opportunity for dramatic choreography and physical comedy was missed here, and Klassen certainly has the chops to take it to outlandish heights.
The play does have a subtle but significant subplot as a parallel to the primary plot: the courtship of Mistress Page’s daughter, Anne (a nuanced and sweet portrayal by Gwyneth Lincoln). Her three suitors are the Dr. Caius (outstanding zany performance by Jeremy Helgeson), Master Slender (Theo Washington), and Master Fenton (Lucy Wickstrom). Be sure to watch the budding romance between Fenton and Anne—a delightful confection at the center of this rich drama.
The now familiar tropes of the illicit lover hiding in the house from the irate and suspicious husband, cross dressing, mixed-up rendezvous, and people masquerading as alternate identities make the play a hilarious success.
Get some camping chairs, bring some warm clothes, and get out to the woods at Filipponi Ranch to be magicked out of your everyday world, and you too will learn that wives can be both merry and honest!
Editor’s Note: The Merry Wives of Windsor is on stage now through August 10.