‘Merry Wives Of Windsor’ Makes For A Merry Outing

By Nancy K. Crevier

“Shakespeare gets a bad rap because of productions that assume too much,” said Ruth Ann Baumgartner, director of this year’s Town Players Little Theatre Shakespeare production The Merry Wives of Windsor. But as with the previous six plays by Shakespeare that the community theater has staged since A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in 1994, she expects that The Merry Wives will be well received by the Newtown audiences this July.

How well the audience receives a Shakespearean play depends on the particular play, said Ms Baumgartner. “There are some Shakespearean plays that you just can’t do in community theater,” she said, “but all of our plays by Shakespeare that we have performed have gone over very well and audiences have enjoyed them a lot. We have had people comment to us after seeing one of our productions that it was the first Shakespearean play that they had ever been able to follow.”

The Town Players will present The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Orchard Hill Road theater the weekends of July 10 through July 26. On Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11, performances will be at 8 pm. July 17 and 18, and July 24 and 25, there will be an 8 pm performance, with a Sunday matinee at 2 pm on July 19 and 26. The play is appropriate for audiences aged 10 years old and up, said Ms Baumgartner, despite a few bawdy moments within the play.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy involving love, laughter, and double-crossing, when the main character, Falstaff, down on his luck, spins a scheme of seduction that backfires as the wily women he pursues turn the tables. Meddling mothers and suitors vying for the hand of the beautiful village maiden Anne are outwitted by true love in the subplot that also offers plenty of opportunity for humor. While other productions may choose to use modern settings, the Town Players’ July presentation is in a traditional Elizabethan setting with Elizabethan costumes, and barely a trace of the difficult-to-understand old English accent that torments many a playgoer. (Although audiences will enjoy the over the top French and Welsh accents penned by Shakespeare within the play and played to the hilt by the local actors.)

“You might not understand all of the language Shakespeare uses,” said Pam Meister, a Town Players board member, “but the staging and actions help. This is just an entertaining play, and I think audiences will enjoy that.”

Presenting Shakespeare in community theater always offers interesting challenges, Ms Baumgartner said, along with the fun. One of the biggest challenges is casting.

“The first time I did Shakespeare here, in 1994, there were really no other theaters doing summer Shakespeare in the area. Now there are probably 20 summer theaters doing Shakespeare, so casting has become very difficult. There’s a lot of competition,” she said.

Originally slated for the 2004 season, The Merry Wives of Windsor was scratched when Ms Baumgartner could not cast the play. “The roles for adult women are the shining roles in this play, unlike many of the ingénue parts called for in other Shakespearean plays,” she explained. And while she had strong actresses in 2004, the younger women’s and men’s parts did not fall into place.

This year she is pleased to welcome Rob Pawlikowski, in the lead role of Falstaff, back to the Newtown stage. The “outrageous Shakespearean character” originally developed for the Henry IV and V plays, and resurrected by the playwright at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, offers Mr Pawlikowski ample chance to be creative, said Ms Baumgartner. Mr Pawlikowski has appeared in several of the Town Players’ productions of Shakespeare.

The fact that Falstaff is such an outrageous character is what makes him so appealing to audiences, said Ms Baumgartner. “In this [play] we see Falstaff mostly taken advantage of, tricked, and punished. But sometimes we see his temper flare up and think, ‘Oh, he’s not such a nice guy.’ But he is a popular character,” she said.

Also returning under Ms Baumgartner’s direction for The Merry Wives of Windsor are actors Keegan Finlayson, Michael Cassidy, Olivia Carr, Christopher Bird, and Ward Whipple. Finding a cast of actors who exhibit the qualities needed to put on a Shakespearean play requires finding those with good control of voice, good posture, clear speech, and no shame, said the director, all qualities she can count on with this cast. “You can have no self-consciousness when doing Shakespeare. Acting Shakespeare is in a way dancing, singing, and clowning. There is a presentational way that Shakespeare has to be performed,” Ms Baumgartner said.

This year’s production also features some family duos, with Timothy Huber as the Welsh parson Sir Hugh Evans, and Mr Huber’s daughter, Madeline, as Falstaff’s page, Robin. Brothers Louis and Gabriel Gordon have supporting roles as the suitor Slender (Louis) and as a servant (Gabriel).

A husband and wife team, Robert and Linda Gilmore, also veterans of Ms Baumgartner’s directing, take on other roles in the play, including Ms Gilmore in the lead role of Mistress Page.

“It’s really nice to have family members in this play, in particular,” said Ms Baumgartner, “because it is about families. It is about trust in marriage; giving a child freedom; and being a good parent. There is a real emphasis on the cohesion of a community, as well.”

 Shakespeare is not hard to understand, said Ms Baumgartner, who has taught Shakespeare at Fairfield University and Central Connecticut University since 1971. “You have to remind the actors that you are human beings, that you are playing people. Then the audience recognizes themselves in the actors on the stage.”

Even more so than when she first started teaching Shakespeare, Ms Baumgartner has come to love the English poet and playwright of the 16th Century. “When I started teaching, I had really studied Shakespeare. I have learned so much about Shakespeare from actors’ questions and I have come to really, really honor him so much more now.”

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a very silly play, said Ms Baumgartner, which has the ability to overcome anyone’s “bad high school experiences with Shakespeare.”

Tickets for any of the July performances of The Merry Wives of Windsor can be obtained by calling the Town Players box office at 270-9144. Tickets for the evening performances are $18; matinees, $15. The Little Theatre is located on Orchard Hill Road, off of Route 25, in Newtown.