The Merry Wives
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds/Touring
2/5

RUMOURED to have been written at the behest of Elisabeth I, The Merry Wives of Windsor is widely regarded to be one of Shakespeare’s weakest plays. 

Even so, that’s no barrier to Northern Broadsides, who tackle the farce with their usual aplomb.

To underline the universal theme of jealousy, Windsor has been removed from the title and the action transposed to a sparsely decorated country house in the 1920s.

Here the characters are dressed in cricket whites and plus-fours, as if to drive home the point that the protagonists are playing games on one another.

Most of the mischief is directed at Sir John Falstaff, who decides to woo two married women in the hope that they can help him out of his financial hard times.

It’s a role perfectly suited to Barrie Rutter who, in over-acting mode and dressed in a fat suit to give him “two yards about the waist,” suffers the indignity of being hidden in a washing basket, being dressed as the “fat woman of Ilkley” and turned into a stag to avoid being detected by Mistress Ford’s jealous husband.

Rutter isn’t alone in the broad-stroke stakes. Mistress Page (Nicola Sanderson) is a joy as she reads Falstaff’s love letter while on a treadmill, Frank Ford (Andrew Vincent) so enthusiastically empties the washing basket that the front row finds itself covered in dirty laundry and housekeeper Mistress Quickly (Helen Sheals) eagerly mangles language in a way that predates Julie Walters’s Mrs Overall.

The culminating musical number, akin to a hammy am-dram group reimagining scenes from The Wicker Man, finally reveals Falstaff’s foolish scheme.

But it can’t quite compensate for the play’s inherent weaknesses which leave the audience with little in the characters or plot to invest in.

Runs until April 16, box office: wyp.org.uk, then tours until May 28, details: northern-broadsides.co.uk