By Ruth Ross
For their third production of the 2026 season, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is taking a page from its namesake’s oeuvre, calling the brand-new endeavor Rogue Shakespeare.
With a week of rehearsal and no director, the cast came in with lines memorized and worked together to make the production stage-worthy, even contributing their ideas to character interpretation, scenery, and blocking. I am here to assert that their efforts are a masterful success.
According to a theatrical tradition, Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in a fortnight at the behest of Queen Elizabeth, who wanted to see Sir John Falstaff, her favorite character from Henry IV, Parts I and II and Henry V, once again. One can imagine the Bard paling at his monarch’s directive, for despite the tight time frame for writing, he had killed off Falstaff in Henry V!
To get around these awkward logistics, Shakespeare sets his play before Falstaff befriends Prince Hal, when his debauchery is just beginning to make itself manifest. This incarnation of Falstaff, fast-forwarded two centuries beyond the Henry plays, still imbibes too much liquor and fancies himself attractive to the ladies. This time, however, two objects of his attention, Mistress Margaret Page and Mistress Alice Ford, both of whom have control over their prominent middle class husbands’ money—which he desires—become aware of his serial wooing and decide to make him the laughingstock of the sleepy, provincial town of Windsor. Playing along with Falstaff, they devise a clever plot to stymie his plans and humiliate the blowhard in the process, hiding him in a basket of dirty laundry, disguising him as an old witch and publicly embarrassing him in a phantasmagoric midnight ritual deep in the forest, aided and abetted by townsfolk disguised as fairies and hobgoblins. (Above, the merry wives of Windsor, portrayed by Erin Partin and Ka-ling Cheung)
On a spare set of draperies flanked by a pair of doors—so necessary to farce—and dressed by a table and rolling settee and chair, further hilarity is provided by the wooing of Mistress Page’s lovely daughter Anne by the childlike, goofy gentleman Abraham Slender, attracted by her father’s money; a foppish French doctor named Caius; and a handsome gentleman Fenton, whom Anne really loves. Add an insanely jealous husband, a Welsh parson and a pandering housekeeper, and you have a recipe for merriment!
As Falstaff, Jeffrey Bender (above, with Erin Partin as Alice Ford) has the physical and dramatic heft to play the man as an aging blowhard while evoking some sympathy for an old man overfull of pride in his physical attractiveness. He even moves like the overweight man he is! His nemeses, Ka-ling Cheung as Margaret Page and Erin Partin as Alice Ford, convey a sassiness and knowledge of what makes men tick.
Michael Stewart Allen (above) is superb as the jealous Frank Ford, especially when he dons a disguise to smoke out his wife’s (supposed) infidelity. His apoplectic delivery (bottom photo) is hilarious; just watching him morph from Ford to Brook and back to Ford again is a show in itself. In contrast, George Page (played with equanimity by David Shih) evidently trusts his wife more but helps with the shenanigans that bring Sir John to his knees. It’s a triumph of the middle class over their social superiors.
As he often does in his plays, Shakespeare creates characters who mangle the English tongue with impunity. With a thick Welsh accent, Patrick Toon’s parson, Sir Hugh Evans, elicits laughter from the audience. As the sassy, conniving housekeeper for Dr. Caius, Alison Weller also utters Malapropisms as she helps the matrons in their scheme, while Christopher Sutton brings down the house as the Frenchman Dr. Caius, his hair askew and his thick accent. At times, I heard echoes of Peter Sellers’ portrayal of Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the 1963 film, The Pink Panther (”Does your daahg baahte?”) And tall, lanky Cole Henry Gilder’s portrayal of Abraham Slender involves some mispronunciations too, along juggling a ball while speaking! He may be a gentleman by station but not in demeanor.
The rest of the cast double and, sometimes, triple up in roles. Hassiem Muhammad’s Justice of the Peace Robert Shallow is just that, shallow; Alison Weller, Mistress Quickly, Host of The Garter Inn, schmoozes with her customers while keeping abreast of what’s going on around town and getting in on the action. Emily S. Chang (above) is a lovely Anne Page, about to be traded like a horse by a mother and father to different candidates, when all she wants is to marry handsome, earnest, noble Fenton (Muhammad, above). As Falstaff’s servant/sidekicks, Sutton (Bardolph), Gilder (Pistol), and Ryan N. Murray (Nym) connive against their former master in revenge for being let go from his household! Chang doubles as the servant John Rugby, and Gilder does well in a brief scene as the Pages’ son.
It’s important to note that, at its heart, The Merry Wives of Windsor is a revenge play, a popular staple of Elizabethan theater, usually a bloody drama with a high body count at the end. With its physical comedy and ribald humor, The Merry Wives of Windsor offers a comedic “take” on revenge.
With its physical comedy, ribald humor and brisk pacing, this production is terrific opportunity to expose young people to Shakespeare. Although the plot may be difficult to follow at first, a result of superfluous characters and scenes, keep your eye on the wives and their husbands, the ingénue and her three suitors, Mistress Quickly and, of course, Sir John Falstaff, and you’ll split your sides with laughter.
The Merry Wives of Windsor will be performed at the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre on the campus of Drew University, 36 Madison Ave., in Madison for one more weekend only through Sunday, August 23. For information and tickets, call the box office at 973.408.5600 or visit www.ShakespeareNJ.org online.
Photos by Avery Brunkus.