Merry Wives of Windsor Could Use More Merry, Fewer Wives

Seattle Shakespeare Company rounds out a successful 2010-2011 season on a lighthearted note with The Merry Wives of Windsor. Like many Shakespeare comedies, Windsor follows an excess of characters through deceptive plot twists, romantic hijinks, and literal and figurative disguises. The story comes down to this: There’s a young couple in love, and a lot of people would rather see them otherwise. SSC's production is equal shares fun and double-cross but suffers a murky, troubled first half before landing at its compelling conclusion.

The play's faults are mostly Shakespeare’s. Believed to have been written hastily in response to a request from the Queen, Windsor ties itself up in the first half dealing with the various suitors of Anne Page. There's the man she wants to marry, Master Fenton, and the two doofs her parents picked out for her, Master Slender and Dr. Caius. Slender is likeable enough, but Caius, with his heavy accent and poor swordsmanship, is too ridiculous for his own good. He quickly takes the play from big laughs to eye-rolls, and when the plot gets good near the end, he only gets in the way.

Tandem to this storyline is the more interesting one of Sir John Falstaff (of Henry IV fame). Falstaff arrives in Windsor needing a financial boost and sets upon wooing a couple of local ladies whose husbands possess sizeable savings. With their buddy mentality and on-stage charisma, these ladies—Leslie Law’s Mistress Page and Candace Vance’s Mistress Ford— turn into the best thing about the show. Once they see through Falstaff’s game, their plots against him are the most fun of any in the play. It’s a shame they don’t share the stage more often in that sluggish first half. Of equal amusement is Therese Diekhans’ Mistress Quickly, who does her best to screw with everyone’s plans.

The production’s strongest players—Law, Vance, Diekhans, John Patrick Lowrie as Falstaff and Anders Bolang as Master Ford, who suffers a superb and lovable meltdown worrying over his wife’s fidelity—are not seen enough of until the final hour, which comes after an impossibly long hour and 45 minutes. When they do arrive, they elevate the play beyond merely watchable to utterly delightful, and through them the audience experiences Windsor’s themes of love, jealousy, trust and conflicting social mores. The trouble is in getting there. For all the nodding-off and napping visible in the theatre early on, there were a handful of audience members that didn’t make it back to their seats after intermission.

The Merry Wives of Windsor continues at the Center House until May 15. Visit seattleshakespeare.org for tickets.