What I learned. . .
I was too intimidated by The Merry Wives of Windsor to suggest we produce it (and that I direct it) at the Great River Shakespeare Festival till our eleventh season. How's that for caution and restraint?
I'd seen a fair number of productions of the play, some very successful (Kate Buckley's terrific rendition at the Utah Shakespeare Festival; Penny Metropolus's and Pat Patton's versions during two separate decades at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and some not as successful. The ones that worked trusted the script and also assembled excellent ensembles of gifted, truthful comic actors; the ones that didn't pushed and cartooned the story and the characters to a place beyond recognizable human behavior.
Knowing that our company at Great River was comprised of some highly adept comic actors who had been working together long enough to 'play well with others', and also confident that we would anchor ourselves in the text, armed with the guideposts of previous productions I'd admired, I set my course, took a deep breath, and plunged into the waters of Windsor.
It's a challenging play. 80% prose, numerous plot lines (some of which are seen through to fruition, others of which are dropped almost as quickly as they're introduced), and a not always harmonious linguistic symphony.
I knew if we were going to succeed, I should enlist the help of Jack Forbes Wilson, with whom I had collaborated on three previous productions at Great River. It didn't take long to land on a turn-of-the-Century setting for our Merry Wives (actually, 1907-1912-ish), a time of peace, prosperity, and innocence that coincided with the very middle class roots, values, and virtues that informed Shakespeare's vision of Windsor. (One of my earliest helpful lessons: the word "merry" can mean 'comfort' -- that sense that there is enough to go around. . . a kind of ease and well-being.)
That time period also coincided with Winona's own "hey day," when it was itself one of America's five wealthiest mid-size cities and enjoying a time of prosperity and comfort thanks to the timber industry and the amount of logging traffic on the Mississippi River at the time. Winona is known for its Victorian architecture (second largest collection of restored Victorian era buildings in the state of Minnesota); accordingly, I asked Eric Stone, our set designer, to take photos of buildings around town that we might be able to incorporate into a scenic surround for the production. Those efforts, and Eric's ingenuity, brought together the images in what he called "the tiny village" - an overhead triptych, spanning the width of the stage and framing the set.
Although our second table read of the play clocked in at a brisk 2 hours and 10 minutes, by the time we added our traditional prologue, transitional music, an 'entre' acte', and an epic seven-minute long curtain call which culminated in an audience sing-a-long, the production played in just under three hours (standard for Shakespeare's plays), but evidence points to our Merry Wives being a fast and entertaining time in the theatre.
As for those comic actors, casting turned out to be something of a breeze. Jon Daly agreed to don the fat suit once again to play Falstaff (whom he had played three summers prior, in Henry IV, Part One - though for Merry Wives, Meg Weedon thought she should slim him down a bit. . . this was, after all a play about Falstaff in love -- or lust -- and courting anyone in the corpulent guise of the earlier production would not have been seemly or appetizing). Tarah Flanagan was a natural to inhabit Mistress Alice Ford; Chris Gerson and Andrew Carlson seemed ideal as the language mangling Welshman Sir Hugh Evans and his counterpart, the French Dr. Caius; Michael Fitzpatrick had all the graceful generosity and hospitableness to make George Page as warm and likeable as he needed to be; John Maltese, in his second season, made a dashing Master Fenton; Benjamin Boucvalt, also in his second season, a delightfully simple Abraham Slender; Gerrad Taylor, another actor returning for his second season, an energetic and railing Host of the Garter Inn; Chris Mixon a properly addledpated and muddled Justice Shallow and Doug Scholz-Carlson, newly immersed in his duties as GRSF's Artistic Director, a charming Peter Simple. Brian White and Robert Montgomery doubled as Pistol and Nym and John and Robert; whenever one was on stage, the other was not far behind. Leslie Brott, Steve Hendrickson, and Sigrid Sutter joined the acting company for their first seasons and were splendid as Mistress Quickly, Frank Ford, and Margaret Page; Jenni McCarthy and John Steele, Jr., both 2013 season Apprentice Actors, rounded out the company as Mistress Anne Page and John (Jack) Rugby. I couldn't have liked it more. (And we had a delightful group of six young actors from the Winona community who played Robin, William Page, and several school children, which contributed that much more to the sense of community I believe is essential to the play. More than anything else, I think The Merry Wives of Windsor is the story of a town.)
My director's script became a sea of notes and arrows and charts as I tried to track the action and make sense of the story. So many balls to juggle; so many trains on parallel tracks, each moving forward at its own rate. My job was to keep it all clear, and, I think, to make sure the assumed plot advancements linking action between scenes were kept in view (or within the audience's perception and consciousness). So many messages to deliver; so much gossip to convey. Daunting, but fun.
I learned that not far beneath the surface of Shakespeare's script are lessons about shame. There were so many moments of people shaming each other or being shamed, by others or through their own actions. Even William Page, George and Margaret's son, in a scene that is frequently cut from the play, comes up against the threat of shame when he doesn't remember all of his school lessons. But Sir Hugh proves himself a tender and merciful schoolmaster, lets William off the hook, and reveals himself a gentle soul not fit for dueling (as he had been challenged to do by the fiery Frenchman, Dr. Caius, an act or two before William's Latin lesson). The legend, of course, is that William Shakespeare's grammar school Latin instructor had been a Welshman and that he was poking fun at his childhood teacher, which is probably true. But even in a quick and charming scene, there's more there than meets the eye or ear - and as is usually the case, I was delighted to discover the hidden pleasures of this under-rated, overlooked play.
My greatest lessons about Shakespeare are increasingly about forgiveness. All of his plays seem to contain moments in which forgiveness is required, earned, and granted. . . or not. No less so with Merry Wives. Falstaff receives his comeuppance and is invited home for dinner. Frank Ford learns his lesson about jealousy and is forgiven by his wife. George and Margaret Page realize their daughter's marital happiness -- like their own -- is only possible with the person she genuinely loves. Parents forgive child; child forgives parents; and at least on the surface at play's end, that sense of comfort and peace in a charming, merry town not far outside London prevails.