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Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Globe's slimline Falstaff is a half-fat hero, in a Merry Wives Of Windsor that's not quite merry enough
The Merry Wives Of Windsor (Shakespeare's Globe) Verdict: Moderately merry A BIT like the epic operas of Richard Wagner, Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives Of Windsor has some great moments... and very long half hours. It's the one about Sir Jack Falstaff, the would-be sexual interloper with a very unfavourable body mass index, and a waistline 'two yards about'. He is, as he says himself, 'as subject to heat as butter'. And we can all relate to that right now. Fancying his chances with a couple of Windsor wives, Mistresses Page and Ford, our Jack is thrilled to his codpiece when he appears to pull both. But the ladies plan to teach Falstaff a lesson, while Mistress Ford's jealous husband Frank secretly hopes to catch him in flagrante delicto. Awkwardly out of step with modern tastes, thanks to its period appetite for comic humiliation and body shaming, Sean Holmes's cheerful new production gets around the problem by casting a trim and handsome George Fouracres in a fat suit as Falstaff. And he's dressed in a gorgeous liturgical red doublet and hose, to make him stick out like a sore thumb. It may be cheating, but Fouracres augments his jowls with a herbaceous beard, and employs a large and lascivious range of comic eye rolls. The wives themselves (Emma Pallant as Mrs Page and Katherine Pearce as Mrs Ford) could be merrier in their subterfuge. But Pallant is compromised by the fact she actually carries a torch for ginormous Jack. Jolyon Coy is more fun as Mr Ford, whose plans to trap Falstaff repeatedly rebound on him. Excruciating subplots pass in a blur of regional accents and false beards. Cutting half an hour would be a small mercy — especially the random Welsh parson teaching grammar. But the set design of Liberty print wallpaper and matching costumes is easy on the eye, and the physical comedy just about gets us over the line. The Merry Wives Of Windsor is on at Shakespeare's Globe until September 20. Noughts & Crosses (Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park) Verdict: Nought great Rating: Noughts & Crosses is a sadly bovine adaptation of Malorie Blackman's dystopian young adults' novel, inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Black oligarchs rule a segregated society where white people are bitterly oppressed. Here, the daughter of the deputy PM, Sephy (Corinna Brown), falls for white schoolmate Callum (Noah Valentine), only for him to get mixed up with freedom fighters. First seen at the RSC in 2007, adapted by incoming Almeida Theatre boss Dominic Cooke, the melodramatic story does move at a decent lick. But where Shakespeare illuminated his tale with sunlit poetry, this is a prosaic parody of white power. Callum's downtrodden, working-class family feel like a campaign case study for the BNP. Not Blackman's intention, I'm sure. Brown is a vivacious young Sephy: bolshy yet bashful. And Valentine's loyal young Callum is streetwise, yet sensitive. But Tinuke Craig's production includes 16 other 2D stiffs, on what looks like a firefighters' practice ground of concrete turrets and rusty stairwells. And with actors expressing themselves by knocking over chairs, I was all too glad to escape into the balmy night, and Regent's Park. Noughts & Crosses runs at the Open Air Theatre until July 26. Wilko: Love And Death And Rock 'n' Roll (Leicester Square Theatre) Verdict: Electric Rating: Dr Feelgood's feisty former guitarist Wilko Johnson (real name John Wilkinson), who passed away three years ago, may just have found the perfect final resting place: an underground theatre off Leicester Square. No doubt he'd have preferred something seedier. But with many of the Seventies rocker's fans now well into their pensions, they at least will be glad of some of the West End's most comfortable seats. From these, they can enjoy a show, written by Jonathan Maitland, that is half play, half gig. It first aired in Hornchurch last year — a much more sophisticated setting for Wilko's off-the-wall life story. He grew up after the War with a hostile father, a love of blues guitar, and a teenage sweetheart called Irene who stuck by him through rock-n-roll thick, and drug-fuelled thin and went on to be his wife. The punk guitarist's punk guitarist, Johnson was admired by everyone from Bob Geldof to Paul Weller. Even Roger Daltrey, of The Who, recorded an album with him in 2014, when he was already supposed to be pushing up daisies after a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer. That turned out to be wrong, by the that's another extraordinary Wilko story. Refitted for the West End venue, Maitland's play is now fired more equally by Johnson's exploits and his music. Songs include He Did It Right, a burst of Milk And Alcohol (released by Dr Feelgood after Wilko's departure from the band and hence a huge irritant to the man), and a dip into the Daltrey days. Most memorable, though, is Johnson Willis's performance as Wilko. Willis, who gives the guitarist an even shriller Canvey Island whine than the real McCoy, goes big on Wilko's poetic aspirations as a former student of English literature. But he also gives an excellent representation of Johnson's live guitar playing, which one friend of mine lucky enough to witness it described, with awe, as simply 'electrifying'. Watch out for a roster of guest stars including Jon Otway, Billy Bragg and Wreckless Eric.
Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Merry Wives of Windsor: Reinventing Falstaff – as a bit of a catch
Sean Holmes 's revival of the c1597 Falstaff spin-off reputedly written at Elizabeth I's request (she wanted to see the fat knight in love after watching Henry IV Part I) is lucid, edited for swiftness and offers those seeking some light relief at Shakespeare's Globe a dependable, if basic outing – possibly, on a balmy evening, a blissful one. The casting of new Globe favourite George Fouracres in the plum role of Falstaff – who bids to woo two middle-class Windsor ladies, Mistresses Ford and Page, for pecuniary gain, only to be humiliated and become the town laughing-stock – should be the production's biggest selling-point. The inconvenient truth, though, is that while the talented Black Country comedian and actor gives us a novel slant – he's a younger, more sprightly and more appealing Falstaff than usual, eschewing hoary, roly-poly caricature – he doesn't fully dominate proceedings as you'd hope; the supporting cast often garner the belly-laughs. The problem with trying to do something different with what can look like a proto-sitcom – with its scheming women, stereotyped Frenchman, bevy of dim-wits and plus-sized buffoon at its centre – is that you risk contradicting the running joke at Falstaff's expense. 'This whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly…' sneers Mistress Ford, on reading his duplicitous (nay duplicated) love-letter, allying herself with Mistress Page against 'this greasy knight' (elsewhere he is 'this old fat fellow'). When Fouracres says 'Indeed I am in the waist two yards about', it's as if the character's self-delusion has flipped and he's over-exaggerating his portliness. Something of a chancer, and charmer, he's actually seen as hot stuff by Katherine Pearce's lusty Mistress Ford, who can't keep her hands off him or resist a snog. It's a moderately interesting avenue to explore, lending ambivalence to her instinct to punish him, and a grain of truth to her husband's obsessive jealousy. At the end, you see real desperation in this trapped housewife. Still, it feels like a cul-de-sac; there's only so much depth you can apply to a play that glories in shallowness, its barbs and badinage a riot of daftness. The set-piece humiliations, in which Falstaff, fearing discovery, buries himself inside a laundry basket, and disguises himself as the 'fat woman of Brentford', plus the climactic drubbing in the forest, are entertainingly rendered – with a surprising edge to the knockabout violence. But weighed against the grandeur of Falstaff's past – especially Roger Allam's Olivier-winning performance in a Globe Henry IV – Fouracres has been prematurely propelled into the role; his roguish performance feels rather run-of-the-mill. Bringing some vital added colour to the scene – rather neutered and socially hazy thanks to a tasteful, floral set-design that resembles an outbreak of William Morris wrapping-paper – there are notable turns from Emma Pallant, glinting with mischief as Mistress Page, Jolyon Coy as the insatiably suspicious Ford, and Samuel Creasey as the pompous Welsh parson Evans. Eminently suitable for tourists, fitfully it soars. But Holmes has done better here and it falls short of being a summer sensation for all.
