Merry Wives and Bowery!

The Merry Wives of Windsor is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe and we grabbed a £5 standing ticket. This is one of Shakespeare’s sitcom plays with short, silly episodes of mucking about. The Globe is good at this stuff, and fairly quickly had us all laughing along. This is the one where Falstaff decides to seduce two married women to get himself some cash, but they decide to trick him back. Lots of over the top characters squeezing every laugh and double entendre they can out of every line, it was a lot of fun. The treatment of Falstaff (played with cheeky charm by George Fouracres) at the end was perhaps a bit much for a modern audience so although it’s made light of there was also some uncomfortable shuffling of feet around me. And I liked the way that they brought out the unpleasantness of Mistress Ford’s husband, which stays unresolved and leaves a bit of a sour taste. But just under 3 hours of good quality entertainment for a fiver is an abso...