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| 'Merry Wives’ of whimsy | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Chris Page, Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| March 13, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
How, exactly, can such skinny legs support the kind of heft — one imagines at least three overstuffed pillows lashed to Tyler’s midriff — that would make even Fat Albert weak in the knees? Structurally unsound as he may be, Tyler’s Falstaff isn’t the only outlandish caricature in director Jared Sakren’s broad and joyously silly take on Shakespeare’s comedy of courtly comeuppance: There’s the Frenchman (Michael Bailey), punctuating his shaky English with the exclamatory “By gar!” beneath a curly mustache. There’s the toothy numbskull Abraham Slender (David Dickenson), whose slow, dullard drawl evokes Beaky Buzzard. Even Falstaff’s drunkard associate Bardolph (James Porter) is given a bulbous, fake nose as red as Rudolph’s. The only serious thing in this staging at the Mesa Arts Center, in fact, is the quality of local acting talent on display. Joining Tyler and company are Valley stage pros Sarah Wolter (Mistress Page, no relation), Gene Ganssle (overly jealous hubby Ford) and Jason Barth (Welsh priest Sir Hugh Evans), each in fine, delightfully over-the-top form, propping up what amounts to a piffle of a plot: A broke Falstaff attempts to simultaneously woo two married women, though before he can advance and bilk them of their money, they conspire to repeatedly humiliate him — whether by tossing him out with the dirty laundry or dressing him in women’s clothing and having him beaten as a witch. High art, it ain’t. (Sakren, in the show’s playbill, though, dismisses the popular myth that Shakespeare cranked out the slapdash script in a mere two weeks.) For the most part, the director streamlines five acts of pick-on-the-fat-guy for maximum yuks, even clipping the second act to end on a giggly bit of potty humor. Sure, Sakren could have plumbed more sober themes in his “Merry Wives.” A subplotted romance between young Anne Page (Sakren’s daughter, Lillie Sakren) and wart-plagued Fenton (Van Rockwell, who had a shaky opening night) fizzles flat. And Falstaff’s resolution, a disgraced contrition of a sort, fails to satisfy — less the director’s fault than Shakespeare’s. They’re minor quibbles, really. Taking anything seriously in this carefree, slapstick evening of theater is, after all, missing the point. Correction: A character and actor — Bardolph, as played by James Porter — was misidentified in an earlier version of this story. 'The Merry Wives of Windsor’ When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays through March 22; matinees 2 p.m. March 15 and 22, 3 p.m. March 16Where: Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St. Cost: $12.50-$32 Info: (480) 644-6500 or www.mesaartscenter.com — Grade: A- Contact Chris Page by email, or phone (480) 898-5656 |
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