Have Yourself a Merry Little Windsor

If ever there were a play ripe for the HIDiots to enact, it's The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

Long considered one of Shakespeare's lesser plays, a veritable fan-fiction of his own wildly popular character Falstaff, Merry Wives is said to have been commissioned by Queen Elizabeth herself who supposedly gave the Bard only two weeks to write a play about "Sir John in love."  The resulting plot involves multiple rivals for a young woman's hand, a jealous husband, and Sir John Falstaff attempting to woo the titular wives who foil him at every turn.  The play is almost entirely in prose, full of Elizabethan vernacular which falls mostly flat with modern audiences.  The trick, then, is to manage cut the script to its "best" bits, and augment the comedy through farcical direction.

So how does Hamlet Isn't Dead's latest fare hold up?  Framed as a Christmas trifle, with red-and-green clothes and even ugly sweaters, HID'S Merry Wives is as giddy as a cup of good strong nog.  Once again, the company brings out a strong ensemble full of excellent clowns who double as musicians, and don't object to interjecting modernisms to keep the jingle ball rolling.  Stand-outs include Briana Sakamoto as Robin, Falstaff's servant as channelling by Harpo Marx, and Noah Ruff as the trumpet playing, turtleneck wearing, extremely French Dr. Caius. 

Falstaff himself, played by James Armstrong, is solid although strangely dwarfed among equally large personalities.  Company member Travis Klemm delights in double-duty as Slender, with most of the excised Welsh pastor's lines.  While Associate Producer Sophia Carlin gives a lively Quickly, taking on the excised Bardolf, Pistol and Nym's roles with élan.

The cut is smart, keeping the (very few) known speeches, conflating unnecessary characters, and moving the plot along briskly.  The direction from Artistic Director and Co-Founder David Andrew Laws is sharp, although at times not entirely focused, but with the joy of a good feast: if you didn't like that appetizer, may I interest you in this entrée?  And everything culminates with one of the best uses of a Rudolph costume and mid-90's ska music that you could ever hope to see in a play that is, at its heart, about midwinter madness and holiday hilarity.  Recommended.

The Merry Wives of Windsor plays at the Westbeth Artists' Community at 55 Bethune Street, NYC through Saturday, December 16, 2017.

Tickets are $25 online/$30 at the door.  Purchase tickets through Brown Paper Tickets.

Dr. Caius (Noah Ruff) threatens his romantic rival Slender (Travis Klemm) in HID's Merry Wives of Windsor.

The Merry WIDOWS of Windsor: Rewriting Shakespeare in the Light of #metoo Read the companion piece to this review!