The Merry Wives of Windsor, and: The Merry Wives of Windsor (review)

Since The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of the less frequently performed of Shakespeare’s comedies, it came as something of a surprise that both major outdoor summer Shakespeare festivals in Missouri chose to perform the play during the 2009 season. Both festivals are set up along the lines established many years ago by the free Shakespeare in Central Park program originally devised by Joseph Papp. Both festivals advertise free admission, though in Kansas City a minimal donation of $5 seems all but obligatory, with two festival workers standing ready to accept it at the festival’s lone entrance gate; and in St. Louis a “bills for Will” monetary donation is encouraged at the conclusion of the performance. Both festivals situate their performances in the midst of “green world” park land that seems ideally suited for Shakespearean comedy. The St. Louis festival is located in the middle of Forest Park, an impressive expanse of green space that originally served as the grounds for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The Kansas City festival operates within Southmoreland Park, a rather small, narrow stretch of greenery wedged in between the city’s largest art museum and a small residential neighborhood that adjoins the well-known and heavily visited Country Club Plaza. Both festivals invite theatregoers to bring blankets or lawn chairs, with designated areas assigned for those choosing each alternative (with those choosing the blanket option granted a closer proximity to the stage so that their view will not be blocked by those using portable chairs). And both festivals offer an assigned close-up seating section for those willing to pay $10 (in St. Louis) or $20 (in Kansas City). The fact that both festivals are able to take advantage of hillsides that slope gently down to their stages makes this series of options viable, while ensuring decent sight lines for just about all spectators. In St. Louis, I opted for a $10 reserved seat, while in Kansas City I was able to secure a spot for my lawn chair that provided an excellent stage-center vantage point.

Both productions took some short cuts in order to arrive at nearly identical running times of two hours, thirty minutes, including a fifteen-minute intermission. In St. Louis, the most obvious omission involved the character of the Welsh parson, Sir Hugh Evans, whose role was completely eliminated. As a result, the Host of the Garter Inn served as primary peacemaker in the play’s opening confrontation between Falstaff and his minions and Justice Shallow, and Slender took over Evans’s part in the mock-duel sequence with Doctor...