The temptation to go the full Boris must have been strong. In the end, though, the Royal Shakespeare Company have settled instead for something more like a local Tory party chairman, in the shape of precipitously tall – and impressively padded – John Hodgkinson, to play the randy fatso Sir John Falstaff.
It’s a splendidly suburban production that — with its pre-fab, mock-Tudor buildings and plastic box hedges — re-creates the sleepy serenity of well-heeled middle England.
Some scenes are set in a beer garden (advertising ‘Pie Sports’ inside), while domestic interiors are furnished with John Lewis sofas, lamps and ready-made curtains. The Partnership should probably have a credit in the programme.
But it is Hodgkinson’s Falstaff who rules — and rues — the day. He is perhaps the best Merry Wives’ Falstaff I have ever seen (his incarnation in three of Shakespeare’s history plays being an altogether more declassé kettle of fish).
Usually presented as a lewd, slothful clown from the start, here he is a haughtier, higher-status creation, oozing pride and pomposity as he lords it over his ‘followers’ — who are a rabble of ASBO teenagers.
Photograph of The Merry Wives Of Windsor (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford on Avon)
It’s a splendidly suburban production that — with its pre-fab, mock-Tudor buildings and plastic box hedges
In his finely tailored navy-blue three-piece suit with club tie, Hodgkinson displays the deportment of a barrister, well used to the commanding authority of his sonic boom.
But he really starts to cook when it comes to his mission to bed two of Windsor’s finest: Mistress Page (Samantha Spiro) and Mistress Ford (Siubhan Harrison).
They, in turn, set him up for a famous fall, as he escapes the wrath of jealous Mr Ford — first in a laundry basket, then a plus-size frock.
Spiro and Harrison are a perfect double act of fashionably coiffed middle-aged ladies, gleefully project-managing Falstaff’s comeuppance. Spiro is short and bouncy, while Harrison is her opposite, tall and breathless.
Meanwhile, Richard Goulding as husband Frank Ford is near constipated with jealousy; and Jason Thorpe amuses as French dentist Dr Caius, offering to have a word in an anagram of someone’s ‘ears’ (think bottom).
Trainspotters will be glad to see Patrick Walshe McBride finally making his RSC debut, having spent so long shunting around nearby as the preening office thespian in the BBC’s Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. Here, he is a gawky young Mr Bean, in nervous prospect of a marital misalignment.
He is also evidence of the attention to detail in Blanche McIntyre’s formidably lengthy (almost three-hour), yet still respectably taut production. Like Falstaff, it probably carries a little too much weight, but that doesn’t stop it being a very merry dance.
It’s no bad thing to take liberties with Shakespeare, but Not Too Tame theatre company’s new production of Twelfth Night at Shakespeare North Playhouse, starring Les Dennis, ensures our Will’s writing is more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Some scenes are set in a beer garden (advertising ‘Pie Sports’ inside), while domestic interiors are furnished with John Lewis sofas
In his finely tailored navy-blue three-piece suit with club tie, Hodgkinson displays the deportment of a barrister, well used to the commanding authority of his sonic boom
The Bard’s melancholy romcom is transformed into a raucous rock musical with Elizabethan interludes, in what might best be described as a sing-along with Shakespeare. The story of shipwrecked Viola and her twin brother Sebastian, who get caught up in the romantic intrigues of the country’s Duke, Countess and her servant Malvolio (Dennis) is electrified, literally, by a barrage of classic plugged-in pop and four-letter ad-libbing.
We open with the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, pressing on to Shakespears Sister (Stay), with the occasional ad hoc rap from the rock star Duke, Orsino.
There is a howling song medley, triggered by drunken, trouble-making knights Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek, with the audience urged to join in — only to be admonished by Dennis’s killjoy Malvolio (a pink-chopped pensioner displeased to find his Lady’s house turned into a tavern).
When the revellers eventually get their revenge — by tricking him into thinking the Countess is sweet on him — he pulls on a hilariously bling outfit of a high-vis yellow fur coat, topped with eyeliner, aviator shades and a bed-head hair-do, all to the strains of Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing.
Where Dennis finds pathos in his humiliation, the evening’s caustic energy springs largely from a cheerfully manic ensemble cast.
Louise Haggerty stokes the crowd as a Glaswegian compere-fool; Purvi Parmar is a girl-next-door Countess Olivia; and Kate James, as her mischievous maid Maria, is a scheming Scouser. Georgia Frost and Tom Sturgess, as the separated shipwrecked siblings, show off their musical talents playing guitar and keyboard.
Reuben Johnson’s dim-witted Sir Andrew Aguecheek clowns around with Jack Brown’s demotic dipso Toby Belch, as Jimmy Fairhurst’s production seeks to bring Shakespeare to the people.
They succeed — but only by knocking him off his plinth.
The Merry Wives of Windsor runs until September 7. Twelfth Night finishes on June 29.