Perhaps you remember Sir John Falstaff (here played by Mark Klassen), Shakespeare’s rotund, vain, boastful, and often drunken knight. He’s best known as companion to Prince Hal, future King Henry V of England, in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. Witty and often charming, he’s reduced to a buffoonish albeit good-natured suitor in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The play is headlining this year’s Central Coast Shakespeare Festival at Filipponi Ranch in San Luis Obispo, running on weekend nights through Aug. 10.
As it opens, Falstaff is short on funds but has a typically Falstaffian plan to reverse his misfortune by simultaneously courting two wealthy married women, Mistress Ford (Kristie Siebert) and Mistress Page (Isabel Skene). His plan goes predictably awry.
The husbands learn of Falstaff’s machinations, and the two merry wives discover they’ve received identical love letters. As revenge and for their own amusement, they set a series of embarrassing traps and pranks for their would-be lover. Master Page is untroubled by the attempted cuckolding, while Master Ford’s jealously causes umbrage and, disguised as “Master Brook,” he approaches Falstaff with a ruse designed to ferret out his plan to seduce his wife.
This being Shakespeare, there are many other characters to follow, for instance the Pages’ daughter, Anne (Gwyneth Lincoln), who’s contending with three suitors herself: Doctor Caius (Jeremy Helgeson), Master Slender (Theo Washington), and Master Fenton (Lucy Wickstrom). Doctor Caius’ housekeeper, Mistress Quickly (Sophie Rhiannon) proves herself to be a world-class meddler.
There’s a lot to take in, including a hilarious duel, some crossdressing incidents, and an accidental gay marriage. Oops. As Shakespeare plays go, Merry Wives feels closer to our modern sensibilities as it explores love and marriage, jealousy and revenge, and wealth and social class. Much of its humor stems from the many misunderstandings between characters. Sexual innuendo and double entendres abound.
The play is skillfully directed by Cynthia “Cindy” Totten, Ph.D., professor emerita of theatre at Eckerd College on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She makes very good use of Cal Poly Theatre Professor Emeritus Al Schnupp‘s amazing two-story stage, keeping the action coming and going from all angles and portals. Her blocking fills the space, and the use of physical comedy led to eruptions of laughter from the audience.
Instead of circa 1600 when the play was written, Totten set it in the Edwardian era, “roughly between 1900 and 1914, inspired by the artistry of Downton Abbey,” she explained. “Costume designer Roger Upton has grouped related characters in similar colors: the Pages are in peaches, roses, and burgundies; the Fords are in soft blues, grays, and greens. The fantastical French doctor Caius, his maid Mistress Quickly, and his valet Rugby wear vibrant peacock blues. Impoverished knight Sir Falstaff and his crew of rude mechanicals are in mismatched plaids, striped shirts, and rustic tweedy vests, like a pile of tumbled autumn leaves.”
It’s truly a visual feast, and the play—which can run two and a half hours—has been somewhat shortened. The first part is an hour, and after intermission, the second wraps up in under an hour.
“Artistic Director Zoe Saba edited the play into a streamlined script that preserves the humor and integrity of Shakespeare’s language,” Totten explained. “We’ve added dances, songs, and movement work throughout, with some adjusted lines to suit the story and the illogical whimsy of our production.”
Totten calls Merry Wives a “citizen play” because instead of royalty, it’s about regular people. To give the stage an Edwardian vibe, Schnupp “adorned the set with hanging shop signs reflecting Windsor businesses such as a fish market, a barber shop, an apothecary, and a farrier, with decorative shop window displays of Edwardian era items.”
Shakespeare’s language can be challenging, and his penchant for using iambic pentameter can lead to unusual syntax, but Merry Wives is written almost entirely in prose, making it very accessible. Totten’s production boasts a lot of comical, farcical fun as Falstaff gets his comeuppance.
“Merry Wives is a wild and wooly romp of a play,” Totten agreed. “It has the jaunty physicality of silent films, which inspired me to create an opening movement montage, a faux sword fight, a comic tango, a menacing spirit dance haunting the woods at midnight, and a curtain call dance, all choreographed by Robert Jason Sumabat. The cast and I also explored the Commedia dell Arte idea of lazzi—bits of comic business peppered throughout the play.
“We strive to make Shakespeare understandable and accessible to all,” Totten continued. “We offer two Friday pay-what-you-can performances in addition to regularly priced performances. The Central Coast Shakespeare Festival welcomes everyone to the show.”
Even if you’re “not a Shakespeare lover,” if you like live theater, you’ll love this kinetic, funny, well-acted production. It’s an entertainment triumph.
“My hope is that audiences come away from the play transported from the seriousness of daily life into a colorful comical world full of truthful moments that capture recognizable human behavior both loving and laughable,” Totten said. “The play can also be viewed as pure escape with Shakespeare’s underlying universal message of what fools we mortals be.” Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in 55 Fiction 2025.