The Merry Wives of Windsor, and: Romeo and Juliet, and: All's Well That Ends Well (review)

The summer of 2008 marked the fifth year that the San Diego Old Globe Shakespeare Festival performed in repertory. The company was comprised of twenty-seven performers (thirteen professional actors and fourteen graduate theatre students). Each participant served in at least two of the three plays produced. Artistic director Darko Tresnjak linked these plays by their emphasis on love and family.

The Festival Theatre, an outdoor venue seating 612, has a broad upper stage above its generous main stage. Both levels have inner stages, and a stairway on each side connects the two acting levels. The set for The Merry Wives of Windsorwas a village familiar from western movies. Viewers were bombarded with clapboard backdrops covered with faded signs in large Playbill print: General Merchandise, Cigars, Rooms, Dry Goods, Café, Livery Stable, Seed, Liquor, Saloon, Tonsorial Parlor, and (most importantly) the Garter Inn. Along with the signs were other props from westerns: an upright piano, two round tables with captain's chairs, a larger-than-life carved bear, two small cigar store Indians, a barrel, etc. The upper stage became a saloon balcony with turned railing. Mounted to the edge of the balcony were four sets of antlers, symbols of cuckoldry that were prominent in every scene. The production reveled in folksy clichés and was visually over-the-top in staging details.

For Falstaff 's entrance at the Garter Inn, a long bar with liquor bottles and boot rail was rolled onto the lower stage. Behind the bar was the stereotypical painting of a reclining nude. Rousing music from a mythologized American West was played on the piano, a banjo, and a harmonica by Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym while five bouncy ladies danced a cancan. Later we discovered that one of the dancing ladies was the inn's Host (transgendered to Hostess). Costuming was exaggerated and lavish, thus contributing heavily to the burlesque quality of the production—big hats and great coats for the men, yards of colorful skirts, ruffles, "buttons and bows" for the women. Justice Shallow wore a knee-length coat, a gray western suit, tall black boots, and a wide western hat. The actors portraying Falstaff and Shallow were relatively short, and their costumes seemed purposely oversized. Falstaff 's fringed leather jacket came halfway...