Person: Catriona Farrell

The Merry Wives of Windsor

‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ is one of Shakespeare’s more unusual comedies. No strange land for this one for a start. No far-flung Illyria, exotic Messina or Syracuse, but instead the action centres round The Garter Inn in Windsor. A real place no less, and one that stands to this day. Similarly, the Princes, Dukes and sundry other nobles that inhabit so many of his tales are notable by their complete absence, replaced by the title-less and newly prosperous middle classes. The only knight of the realm that features is the rascally, roguish Sir John Falstaff, a knave who sets out with poor intentions to fool the good wives of Windsor out of money, but fails spectacularly at every turn.

It is said that the character of Falstaff was one that Queen Elizabeth herself was most fond of. He appeared first in Henry IV Part One, and again in Henry IV Part Two, a portly, aging disreputable sot, too fond of his drink and of cheap women, forever lacking in funds. Quick to borrow, never to repay, and cowardly to boot, Falstaff does retain a certain charm and zest for life, and it’s this, for a time, that endears him to Prince Hal. However, when the prince becomes the King, all his former life is left behind, including Falstaff. In Henry V, Mistress Quickly delivers a eulogy outlining the circumstances of his death, and there, one might suppose, was the end of him. If a queen commands though, a humble playwright must write, and so, two years after his death, Sir John Falstaff lived again.

So ‘The Merry Wives…’ is what we would call today a ‘prequel’. Reunited with his low-life comrades, Pistol, Nym and Bardolph (the latter two also dying in Henry V, executed for looting), Falstaff unknowingly engages in a battle of wits with Mistress Page and Mistress Ford and finds himself distinctly unarmed, or at least badly under-gunned. Unlike the bittersweet nature of his antics in the histories though, these adventures are purely comedy, descending almost into farce. It dispenses with the oft-used conventions of romantic comedy, such as the mistaken identity, the flirtatious wordplay, the lovesick entanglements, and replaces them with Falstaff, the aging would-be suitor and lothario (supremely lacking in self-awareness) falling for the tricks being being played on him. In parallel, middle-aged, middle-class Francis Ford, consumed with ill-founded jealousy, repeatedly makes a fool of himself while attempting to prove, vainly, his wife an adulterer.

It’s funny, but this, undoubtedly the most original of Shakespeare’s works, drawing on no ancient text or foreign translation, is looked down upon by numerous scholars of the Bard. They seem to forget that the texts weren’t designed to be pored over, dissected and examined by fusty literary experts. It was created to have life on the stage, uproarious, physical life as popular entertainment.

And that is what you have before you. Enjoy.

Journey’s End

R.C.Sheriff’s play is set in the officer’s dug-out of a British infantry company in the trenches facing Saint Quentin. It is the 18th of March, 1918, and in just a few days, the German army will begin Operation Michael, the opening of Ludendorff’s Spring offensive intended to push the British Expeditionary Force into the sea and capture the Channel ports. For the Germans, it is the last roll of the dice in the Great War, which has been going on since August 1914 and wiped out a generation of young men across the continent. In the trenches, the constant threat of death and the fear that generates, along with the loss of friends and comrades, has deeply affected every man there, and each deals with it in their own way. Captain Stanhope leads the infantry company, with a keen sense of duty but a growing dependence on alcohol to cope with the pressures of command. When the young and naive Raleigh joins the company, his precarious balance is disturbed…

After it was written, Sheriff encountered resistance in getting the play produced in London’s West End. There was a reluctance to put on a play about the war, which having ended just ten years previously, was all too fresh in people’s minds. Others baulked at the idea of a play without a leading lady, which would hinder ticket sales. Eventually, the Independent Stage Society were persuaded, after some words from George Bernard Shaw, to put it on at the Apollo Theatre. They still hedged their bets. It was a ‘semi-staged’ production, meaning no sets and minimal props, and would run for just two nights. The lead, Captain Stanhope, would be played by a 21 year old unknown…called Lawrence Olivier. However, when the curtains finally rose on the evening of Sunday, December 9, 1928, in the audience was Maurice Brown, a West End producer. He was impressed, enough at least to take a gamble on booking it to open at the Savoy Theatre on January 21, 1929. Even then, it received minimal promotion and no advance bookings were taken. However, word of mouth was enough, and ‘Journey’s End’ sold out, and proceeded to run for a further two years to packed houses.

Sheriff himself didn’t see the play as being expressly an anti-war piece, rather it was an account of his own experiences. He’d been only 18 when he’d gone to France as a Captain in the 9th East Surrey Regiment, and fought at Vimy, Loos and Passchendaele, where he was severely wounded. He’d written other plays and would go on to write more, though ‘Journey’s End’ remained his most famous stage work. He’d go on to write screenplays too, receiving an Academy (Oscar) nomination for ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ (1939) and a BAFTA nomination for ‘The Dambusters’ (1955).

The Fairy Godfather

In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola gave us the gangster epic ‘The Godfather’. Set in 1940’s New York, it centred on the criminal empire of the Corleone family, led by Marlon Brando’s iconic Don Corleone, and it single-handedly set the tone for American Mafia/Mob/Gangster movies to follow ever since. Nowhere did it say anything about pantomimes.

Richard Lloyd made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. He’d written a pantomime that less than delicately mashed up a bucket of well-used mafia gangster tropes, spread them over a comedy base, added some spicy panto sauce and served them up with side order of rollicking good songs, finishing with a rousing (everybody join in!) rendition of ‘That’s Amore!’. There are good fairies, evil villains, a dame and a gondola-full of Italian cheese gags. You just have to look at the cast list.

So we had to put it on. Really, we had to. And now you gotta to watch it, capisce?

Cut yourself in for a pizza the action tonight.

Treasure Island – The Panto, or ‘Panto Walks The Plank’

‘Treasure Island’, that perennial favourite of British children since its first publication, might seem like an obvious candidate for panto treatment. However, actually arriving at a well-rounded pantomime, incorporating all the essential elements of that genre but also sticking fairly strictly to the plot and characters of Stevenson’s great novel, poses a few problems!

So if ‘Panto Walks The Plank!’ gets under way as a close pastiche of ‘Treasure Island’, you might notice it change tack part way through, in order to accommodate a boarding party of pirate clichés inspired by a wider literature.

After all, as any fan of the Hollywood pirate epics of the 1930s and 1940s will tell you, ‘Treasure Island’ (one of the most famous adventure stories in English literature) is fatally flawed. There’s absolutely no love interest. In fact there are no women at all, with the exception of Mrs Hawkins, and she’s written out of the plot by page 27!

Now, no good pirate movie was truly complete without the love interest, usually represented by Maureen O’Hara. Or the presence of the dastardly Spanish, immaculately attired, elegantly presented and constantly scheming. In fact, the two elements were so quintessential that they were frequently combined through the well-worn dramatic device of ‘Swashbuckling hero falls for the haughty yet gorgeous daughter of the wicked Spanish governor’. So, expect to find both in our version too,

There are other important omissions from ‘Treasure Island’ that undermine its credentials as a bona-fide all-round classic pirate story. For instance, absolutely no-one walks the plank! Now, as it happens, that’s probably because no-one ever really did walk the plank. People who really know their pirates will tell you that this infamous punishment was simply the macabre whimsy of the Victorians and their overheated imaginations. However, if you’re set on telling a good old-fashioned blood and thunder tale of skulduggery on the high seas, you’ve got to include it. It’s part of the tradition.

Being a pantomime also dictates certain changes to the story. For instance, no-one is horribly murdered. Any violence is strictly of the gratuitous slapstick variety. And of course, Long John’s legendary parrot serves splendidly as a pantomime animal. This one even talks! And a ‘Crimson Parakeet’ does have a certain resonance with the 1952 Burt Lancaster comedy adventure movie, ‘The Crimson Pirate’, filmed in glorious Technicolour!

So, shiver your timbers and splice your mainbrace, while Theatre Workshop heaves to and delivers a hefty broadside of fun and adventure. And you may lay to that, arrrrrh!