A Ford in Falstaff's Future
Berkeley Festival's Production of "Merry Wives" Successfully
Rearranges Bard's Plot
Sacramento Bee
If the "Merry Wives of Windsor" had been by any other hand, would it be revived today? Shakespeare would
have been flabbergasted that his silly farce survives 400 years after he dashed it off. But more unlikely things have
happened, as unlikely as a "Merry Wives" that turns around one Frank Ford, jealous husband. The playwright didn't
foresee the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival's John Bellucci, either.
Legend says the comedy, which is supposed to be about Sir John Falstaff, not Ford, was written in a fortnight. Queen
Elizabeth I wanted to see Plump Jack in love, and the playwright complied. Almost. What she saw instead was the fat
knight's comic coveting of two handsometownswomen and their husbands' purses.
Audiences in John Hinkel Park, where Berkeley Shakespeare has opened its summer season with "The Merry Wives," see
as much, but they tend to fix on Bellucci as a squeaky-voiced husband. His agitated, self-doubting quest to ferret out
the truth about his wife (Lura Dolas) and Falstaff (Ollie Nash) becomes the main enjoyment of the comedy. The rest,
including Falstaff getting his comeuppance, is tangy red-eye gravy over molasses-cured ham.
Does that menu suggest we're not in England anymore? How perceptive of you. Director Julian Lopez-Morillas has
commented recently that too many directors obscure Shakespeare with latter-day settings. From that, you'd guess the
director might dare to buck fashion and set "The Merry Wives" where Shakespeare did, in Windsor, up the Thames from
Elizabethan London. You'd be wrong.
Seeking an innocent small-town atmosphere to strike a sympathetic chord in the audience's collective American
consciousness, Lopez-Morillas chose a Mississippi River hamlet in 1903, a place and time evocative of both Mark Twain's
Hannibal, Mo., and Meredith Willson's River City, Iowa. It serves well enough, mostly affording cast members the
opportunity to indulge in down-river drawls and inserted exclamations the like of "Oh shoot!"
The updating makes Falstaff and followers returning veterans of the Spanish-American War. In a festive opening
pantomime, the townspeople put out the bunting and pies to welcome their boys back from Cuba, only to be dismayed
when the grubby roughnecks shamble up Main Street. The veterans' leader, Falstaff, casts his eye on both Mistress
Margaret Page (Amy Ukena) and her friend, Mistress Alice Ford (Dolas), noting greedily that they each control the purse
strings in wealthy households. He writes the ladies identical love letters, not thinking that they'll compare notes and
plot revenge. The not thinking part is troublesome. Falstaff as we know him from the history plays is a crafty old
customer. In "The Merry Wives" his wits have dulled. He allows himself to be lured into traps. The enormous Nash
nonetheless plays Falstaff simply and well, a likable rogue. Some others among the cast labor too obviously for the
chuckles, but there's delicacy to be appreciated in Douglas Sills' preening Dr. Caius, one of three contending suitors to
the Pages' daughter, and in David Kirkwood as the grinning Host of the Garter, whom Lopez-Morillas has made into a
Teddy Roosevelt wannabe. Ukena's Mrs. Page is delightful when she pretends to warn Mrs. Ford of Mr. Ford's approach
(a practical joke on the hiding Falstaff). Then Ford actually charges up the path, changing her prearranged "warning" into
a warning in earnest. When Ford arrives - and virtually whenever he arrives on stage - Bellucci walks away with the
focus. Not by mugging or asking for laughs, but by creating a sweating, squirming little man ruled by sexual insecurity.
He's reminiscent of a great comedy character from early movies, like a talking Harold Lloyd. When he disguises himself as
the gruff-voiced dandy, "Mr. Brook" in order to win Falstaff's confidence, there's real pathos in the way Ford's high
whine of a voice keeps popping through Brook's. It's as if he has to be constantly vigilant not to let despair drain him of
the energy needed to carry off the scheme.
In a more delicately balanced play, one whose reputation might rest on the production's evenhandedness, it would be a
detriment. Here, Bellucci's performance is a fascinating plus. It elevates the proceedings above just another "Merry
Wives," without doing violence to the play. A welcome, one-time shift of perspective after 400 years.
-Peter Haugen, Sacramento Bee
July 1, 1990
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