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The Merry Wives of Windsor |
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First Look Photos of Mistress
Quickly ...
Purchase the "Merry Wives, The Musical" CD CD Merry Wives The Musical -- £15.00
Click here to listen to the MP3 Format
Audio Clip of Recorded live in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. A cast
recording of the music from Soundtrack Listing
Thanks to David T, UK, for bringing
this to my attention
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/video/69000/nb/69436_16x9_nb.asx Thanks to Pauline, UK, for bringing this to my attention
Front Row -- Merry Wives The Musical Review
BBC Radio 4 Programme --
Wednesday, Dec 13, 2006 The Royal Shakespeare Company has turned The Merry Wives of
Windsor into a musical Includes an excerpt of Mistress Quickly singing "Honeysuckle Villain"
Click here to listen to the MP3 Format
Version 13th December 2006 - WOS Review Roundup Review Round-up: Did Wives Make Critics Merry?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pete Wood on Whatsonstage.com (4 stars) – “The production is cast to the hilt: aside from Simon Callow, there’s Judi Dench, Alistair McGowan, Haydn Gwynne and Alexandra Gilbreath. Also making their presence felt are Simon Trinder, a star of the recent RSC Spanish Golden Age season, Paul Chahidi, unobtrusively excellent of late and terrific here as mad Dr Caius, and Ian Hughes as Sir Hugh Evans, a Welsh Parson. In the programme notes, Doran promises ‘a romp’, something the production, for the most part, delivers in spades. It’s beautifully staged and excellently played - yet it doesn’t always sweep one up as one feels it should.… This being a Doran production, the experience is never less than rewarding and it will undoubtedly be a hit. Look out for Brenda O'Hea’s wicked Russell Brand impersonation." Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (1 star) – “While an epidemic of song-and-dance productions spreads through the West End, the Royal Shakespeare Company embarks on an expensive gamble, takes leave of the straight stuff and inflicts this flamboyantly awful, musical version of The Merry Wives of Windsor upon us. I came out whistling in the dark, lamenting the poverty of music and songs and the lumbering, heavy-handed performance-style…. Its 15 songs sound mistily derivative…. The lyrics of Ranjit Bolt, an experienced translator but new to song-writing, constitute a wit-free zone…. In the course of three hours, there are only three minutes of musical and emotional impact. Unsurprisingly, Judi Dench supplies all of them…. Doran's irritating, frequent directorial tactic of standing his actors in a virtual row, from where they tend to speak at us rather than to each other, accentuates the production's artificial air, to which only Dame Judi's fine Mistress Quickly proves a spirited, splendid exception.” Michael Billington in the Guardian (3 stars) – “I found it a rather strenuous romp that often seemed jokey rather than genuinely humorous…. this is a soufflé that takes a long time to rise. And the real reason lies in the nature of the beast. Shakespeare's play is a precise social comedy about bourgeois revenge on a dilapidated aristocracy: here, however, we are in the no man's land of musical comedy…. And Englishby's score similarly shops around…. Of course, there are compensations. Bolt's lyrics, when you can hear them above the orchestrations, sound witty. Callow's Falstaff is a suitably earth-larding figure with an aura of decayed grandeur. Dame Judi's Mistress Quickly, equipped with a backstory from the Boar's Head scenes in Henry IV, is also a genuine delight. The talented Paul Englishby is, in fact, only the latest in a long line of composers drawn to Shakespeare's comedy…. It is well-constructed, deals with the ritual humiliation of Falstaff and contrasts the predicaments of aged lust with the promise of young love.” (see below for the complete review) Paul Taylor in the Independent – “There's a point early on in this musical when Judi Dench, as the frizzy-haired Cockney housekeeper and go-between Mistress Quickly, bustles on and does a comic double-take at one of the dinky half-timbered houses that dot the set. Because it's in perspective, she is a head taller than it is and this scenic device puzzles her. For some members of the audience, though, there will be another less funny dimension to this theatrical in-joke, for Dench is also much bigger than the material in this well-meaning but obdurately uninspired piece…. Unfortunately, almost everything about this venture (where Fifties New Look meets olde worlde Jacobean) feels ersatz and a poor replacement for the real thing…. There isn't an atom of originality in any of it and a woeful lack of polish in the execution. Simon Callow as Falstaff is a plucky substitute for the glorious Desmond Barrit… I’m afraid to say, though, that his booming heartiness kept putting me in mind of a slightly brainier Brian Blessed, while Brendan O'Hea's leather-clad swaggering Pistol is a dead ringer for Russell Brand.” (see below for the complete review)
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (3 stars) – “Anybody who
feared that the RSC’s year-long Bardathon might become a
respectful trot or worthy trudge through tragedies, histories
and earnestly interpreted comedies certainly got their answer
last night…. It’s good seasonal stuff and extremely well cast….
Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly… gives a performance that’s
simultaneously warm, mischievous and, helped by a frizz of red
hair, just a bit slatternly. Maybe Callow misses the lechery
Shakespeare wanted; but his portrait of raddled gentility is
beautifully judged and he makes the most of the comic moments…
McGowan rises to the comic challenge, too…. And who can complain
when that fine comic actor Simon Trinder, playing the gormless
swain Slender, is swigging back booze in an energetically sung,
cheerily choreographed, thoroughly Christmassy salute to sack?”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “Do you remember those end-of-year school plays, when the teachers joined in with the pupils and everyone was supposed to let their hair down and have the most tremendous fun? Embarrassing, weren't they? Well, the RSC's Christmas treat… is often agonisingly reminiscent of such occasions. Everyone is absolutely determined to be jolly…. And just to prove this is a genuinely gold-plated and copper-bottomed occasion, Judi Dench, the beloved and normally frightfully strict headmistress of British theatre, is on hand to show us just what a sport she is by playing Mistress Quickly…. Yet the cruel truth is that the show proves more exhausting than entertaining. Everyone seems to be trying that little bit too hard, the performances are almost all slightly but fatally overdrawn, and the result is that for long sections of the evening those on stage seem to be having far more fun than the audience…. A huge amount of effort has gone into a show that somehow fails to achieve comic lift-off.” Sheridan Morley in the Daily Express – “This is Stratford’s first home-grown musical in a very long time, and Judi Dench’s first in the decade since A Little Night Music at the National…. True, it starts out looking just like an old 1950s Palladium pantomime, complete with villagers frolicking on the (in this case Windsor) town square, as represented by some miniature Tudor-beamed houses which Dench’s Mistress Quickly eyes in passing with hilarious disapproval…. What… composer Paul Englishby and his lyricist Ranjit Bolt have gorgeously and surprisingly come up with here is not a throwback to D’0yly Carte or vintage Broadway, but instead a lyrical echo of the post-war Julian Slade or Vivian Ellis, writing in the golden days when the English stage musical was not afraid to be just that. The score here is gentle, wistful, romantic, elegant: it doesn’t scream at you, and it perfectly suits a brilliantly confident production by Gregory Doran…. I for one can’t wait for the CD of what is a superb Christmas present to us all from the RSC.” - by Caroline Ansdell
Merry Wives - The Musical By Paul Taylor -- Published: 14 December 2006 -- The Independent, UK There's a point early on in Merry Wives - the Musical when Judi Dench, as the Cockney housekeeper Mistress Quickly, bustles on and does a double-take at one of the dinky half-timbered houses that dot the set. Because it's in perspective, she is a head taller than it. For some members of the audience, there will be a less funny dimension to this in-joke, for Dench is also much bigger than the material in this obdurately uninspired and largely mirthless piece. Paul Englishby has written some excellent music for earlier productions by the director, Gregory Doran. They include Sejanus and All's Well That Ends Well, which brought Dame Judi back to Stratford two winters ago to play the wonderfully wise, wry Countess. She returns to take part in what is supposed to be the Christmas treat of the Complete Works Festival. Unfortunately, almost everything about this venture (where Fifties New Look meets olde worlde Elizabethan) feels ersatz. The songs range from sub-Gilbert and Sullivan, through a whooping hoedown in the "Merry Wives" number, to a tango, Hollywood tap and overblown Lloyd-Webber-like ballads. There isn't an atom of originality in it, and a woeful lack of polish and expertise in the execution. Sweating in a hairy fat-suit, Simon Callow as Falstaff is a plucky substitute for Desmond Barrit, who had to withdraw through injury. I'm afraid to say, though, that his generalised booming fruitiness put me in mind of a slightly brainier Brian Blessed, while Brendan O'Hea's swaggering Pistol is a dead ringer for Russell Brand. Ironically, given that Ford is played by Alistair McGowan, it is other members of the cast who occasionally make you feel that the RSC has teamed up with Stars in their Eyes. In Merry Wives, Mistress Quickly surfaces in Windsor, having apparently forgotten that she was the hostess of an Eastcheap tavern in the two parts of Henry IV and that she has a good deal of "previous" with Falstaff. Doran's version beefs up Dench's part and gives her one fairly good song where her trademark cracked voice can come into its own, swerving from rueful reminiscence to defiant rejection of the fat knight who is "full of shit and sack". Falstaff says that, because of his weight, he has an "alacrity in sinking" - and so does one's heart when confronted with great acting and directing talent wasted on such a substandard attempt at high-spirited silliness. To 10 February (08706 091 110) There's a point early on in Merry Wives - the Musical when Judi Dench, as the Cockney housekeeper Mistress Quickly, bustles on and does a double-take at one of the dinky half-timbered houses that dot the set. Because it's in perspective, she is a head taller than it. For some members of the audience, there will be a less funny dimension to this in-joke, for Dench is also much bigger than the material in this obdurately uninspired and largely mirthless piece. Paul Englishby has written some excellent music for earlier productions by the director, Gregory Doran. They include Sejanus and All's Well That Ends Well, which brought Dame Judi back to Stratford two winters ago to play the wonderfully wise, wry Countess. She returns to take part in what is supposed to be the Christmas treat of the Complete Works Festival. Unfortunately, almost everything about this venture (where Fifties New Look meets olde worlde Elizabethan) feels ersatz. The songs range from sub-Gilbert and Sullivan, through a whooping hoedown in the "Merry Wives" number, to a tango, Hollywood tap and overblown Lloyd-Webber-like ballads. There isn't an atom of originality in it, and a woeful lack of polish and expertise in the execution. Sweating in a hairy fat-suit, Simon Callow as Falstaff is a plucky substitute for Desmond Barrit, who had to withdraw through injury. I'm afraid to say, though, that his generalised booming fruitiness put me in mind of a slightly brainier Brian Blessed, while Brendan O'Hea's swaggering Pistol is a dead ringer for Russell Brand. Ironically, given that Ford is played by Alistair McGowan, it is other members of the cast who occasionally make you feel that the RSC has teamed up with Stars in their Eyes. In Merry Wives, Mistress Quickly surfaces in Windsor, having apparently forgotten that she was the hostess of an Eastcheap tavern in the two parts of Henry IV and that she has a good deal of "previous" with Falstaff. Doran's version beefs up Dench's part and gives her one fairly good song where her trademark cracked voice can come into its own, swerving from rueful reminiscence to defiant rejection of the fat knight who is "full of shit and sack". Falstaff says that, because of his weight, he has an "alacrity in sinking" - and so does one's heart when confronted with great acting and directing talent wasted on such a substandard attempt at high-spirited silliness.
Merry Wives — the Musical The Times -- December 13, 2006 -- Benedict Nightingale Anybody who feared that the RSC’s year-long Bardathon might become a respectful trot or worthy trudge through tragedies, histories and earnestly interpreted comedies certainly got their answer last night. Gregory Doran’s adaptation and production of The Merry Wives of Windsor is what the title promises: light, larky and, with Paul Englishby composing and Ranjit Bolt providing the lyrics, packed with music evoking everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Verdi to American Hoe-Down to, well, Shakespeare. It’s good seasonal stuff and extremely well cast: Simon Callow as a Falstaff with billowing silvery hair indebted to Frans Hals, a tum that seems to conceal a wheelbarrow and a fruity gurgle of an accent; Alexandra Gilbreath and Haydn Gwynne as the Windsor ladies, incongruously attired in bandbox 1950s frocks, who tease him and punish his lewd advances; Alistair McGowan as Ford, the most jealous of their husbands, looking like a weird mix of Western sheriff, French waiter and Mr Pooter; and Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly. Here’s where Doran has made his principal change. Wisely, he’s cut the abstruse episode in which a Welsh preacher and a French doctor take revenge on the innkeeper who has directed each of them to the wrong site for their duel; but more questionably he’s given Dench’s Quickly greater emphasis. She now berates Falstaff for bankrupting her in Henry 1V and, invited by him to his bedroom, at first seems to agree, with a soupy song about bees being drawn to unsuitable honeysuckles, and then inexplicably takes off with Brendan O’Hea’s Goth-like Pistol. Still, this lets us see more of Dame Judi than we should, and she gives a performance that’s simultaneously warm, mischievous and, helped by a frizz of red hair, just a bit slatternly. Maybe Callow misses the lechery Shakespeare wanted; but his portrait of raddled gentility is beautifully judged and he makes the most of the comic moments, cumbersomely cramming himself into a hamper full of old clothes to escape Ford and, after he’s been tipped in the Thames, creakily reappearing accoutred with mud, lichen and one dead fish. McGowan rises to the comic challenge, too, especially when he feverishly searches the hamper that this time doesn’t contain Falstaff, hurling out underclothes in the mad belief that the fat knight is lurking in a tiny corner. But was it right to give him songs that might have come from Les Mis? Surely it’s clear he’s unhappy about becoming a cuckold without him solemnly singing about Falstaff “burning in the fire of my hate”. Certainly this fits very oddly in a production that sacrifices subtlety of observation for broad effects. Still,
one can’t be over-protective of what is, after all,
Shakespeare’s slightest comedy. And who can complain when that
fine comic actor Simon Trinder, playing the gormless swain
Slender, is swigging back booze in an energetically sung,
cheerily choreographed, thoroughly Christmassy salute to sack?
Thanks to Emma for bringing this to my attention
Merry Wives -- The Musical Hold the front page: Judi Dench cartwheels across the Royal Shakespeare Company mainstage into the wings in "Merry Wives - The Musical." Actually, she doesn't. It's a stunt double, but Dench raises a huge laugh staggering back on as if she really did it. It's the second-funniest moment in the show. The first is when she totters on to be confronted by Stephen Brimson Lewis' high-perspective Tudor-style set and looks startled to see herself taller than a house. Unfortunately, when the highpoints of a comedy musical are two incidental, off-text sight gags - deliciously played though they are - something is awry. Taking Shakespeare's slightest and silliest comedy and adding music is not only a fine idea in principle but one that's often worked in practice, most famously in Verdi's crowning achievement, "Falstaff." But where Rodgers & Hart made a musical winner out of "The Comedy of Errors" with "The Boys From Syracuse" by fully refashioning both text and tone, adaptor-director Gregory Doran keeps as much of Shakespeare as he can in "Merry Wives." He even fleshes out the role of Mistress Quickly for Dench by bringing in material from earlier Falstaff plays. At the same time, Doran and the creative team add 20 musical numbers in almost as many styles. The pastiche pile-up runs from sticky power ballads -- given an Andrew Lloyd Webber twang by ceaseless upward inflections from Martin Crewes (late of London's "The Woman in White") as young lover Fenton -- to extended Gilbert & Sullivan-esque ensemble numbers, as in the sung-through scene in which the wives trick Falstaff (Simon Callow) into a laundry basket. And then there's the tango for the men, a tap routine, an arch wives' duet that sounds like an outtake from Bernstein's "Candide," a brooding song of threat that's straight out of Kurt Weill and a sub-Susan Stroman sequence with everyone bashing pots and pans in an effort to cook up a hoedown. The 15-member band runs to flugelhorn, accordion and double percussion, conjuring an astonishing array of colors and proving composer Paul Englishby is a superb orchestrator. However, his songs lack audible shape, beholden as they are to rambling lyrics by Ranjit Bolt, better known as a highly skilled translator. For all the occasional flashes of wit, too many of the songs descend into sung plot. Together with a sound design that turns muddy once there are more than two voices, they're hard to take in, let alone sing. And although the romp-like production clearly isn't aiming for through-composed stylistic unity, so many extreme changes of gear drain the show of any attempt at cumulative rhythm. That problem is exacerbated by the design. Picture-book Elizabethan houses are flown in and out, but they create overly long, flaccid transitions. A late domestic fireside scene of reconciliation between the husbands and wives has a warm glow as well as the best, most touching song, in which Alistair McGowan's jealous Ford begs forgiveness. But it points up the lack of sustained atmosphere. The striking costumes, meanwhile, are more Elizabeth II. Exquisitely decked out in the post-war New Look -- all cinched waists, full skirts and pert millinery -- Haydn Gwynne and Alexandra Gilbreath have a whale of a time preening and plotting revenge on Falstaff. But they're surrounded by a potpourri of looks from doublet and hose to a punk-like Mohican haircut, plus a forest finale out of "The Nightmare Before Christmas." The actors try to inject energy into Doran's strained production. Without going over the top -- not a phrase applicable to every cast member -- Paul Chahidi gloriously mangles the language as a furious, heavily accented French Dr. Caius. And Brendan O'Hea, unrecognizable in big hair and camp swashbuckling garb (think Jack Sparrow), breathes touching life into Pistol. As for the leads, Dench mines her material for truth and Callow battles gamely with the demands of the score from beneath an outsize fatsuit. Neither of them, alas, truly convinces auds that they wouldn't be a whole lot happier doing the original play. The company is aiming to bring the show to London in 2007. Dench's presence will ensure ticket sales, but when everyone lustily belts out the country-and-western title song -- "Merry wives, merry wives/Sugar and spice and honeydew/Merry wives, merry wives/Coming soon to a town near you" -- it feels, well, overly ambitious.
Merry Wives: the Musical Michael Billington -- Wednesday December 13, 2006 -- The Guardian On paper, it all looks very promising. A musical version of The Merry Wives with a starry cast led by Judi Dench and Simon Callow, lyrics by the verbally inventive Ranjit Bolt and the RSC's golden boy, Gregory Doran, directing. Yet, in all honesty, I found it a rather strenuous romp that often seemed jokey rather than genuinely humorous. The talented Paul Englishby is, in fact, only the latest in a long line of composers drawn to Shakespeare's comedy: Salieri, Nikolai, Sullivan, Verdi and Vaughan Williams all sought inspiration in the play. And you can see why Doran, as adaptor/director, thought it might make a good musical. It is well-constructed, deals with the ritual humiliation of Falstaff and contrasts the predicaments of aged lust with the promise of young love. In performance, however, this is a souffle that takes a long time to rise. And the real reason lies in the nature of the beast. Shakespeare's play is a precise social comedy about bourgeois revenge on a dilapidated aristocracy: here, however, we are in the no man's land of musical comedy. You get the picture in the melodic melange of the opening-number where Elizabethans, Victorians and punks all sing "Let's cast away care" against the background of Stephen Brimson Lewis's half-timbered Windsor. In short, we are in a musical fantasy-land rather than in Shakespeare's world of simmering middle-class resentment. And Englishby's score similarly shops around. At one point the bourgeois Ford and Page engage in an all-male tango with two of Falstaff's followers. And the catchy title number is a hoedown banged out by the merry wives and their friends on washboard, pots and pans. Of course, there are compensations. Bolt's lyrics, when you can hear them above the orchestrations, sound witty. Callow's Falstaff is a suitably earth-larding figure with an aura of decayed grandeur. Dame Judi's Mistress Quickly, equipped with a backstory from the Boar's Head scenes in Henry IV, is also a genuine delight.
First Night: The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Dame Judi towers above this woeful musical venture By Paul Taylor -- Published: 13 December 2006 -- The Independent, UK There's a point early on in this musical when Judi Dench, as the frizzy-haired Cockney housekeeper and go-between Mistress Quickly, bustles on and does a comic double-take at one of the dinky half-timbered houses that dot the set. Because it's in perspective, she is a head taller than it is and this scenic device puzzles her. For some members of the audience, though, there will be another less funny dimension to this theatrical in-joke, for Dench is also much bigger than the material in this well-meaning but obdurately uninspired piece, which has a score by Paul Englishby and lyrics by Ranjit Bolt. Englishby has written some excellent incidental music for earlier productions by the director of the show, Gregory Doran. They include Sejanus and All's Well that Ends Well, the bittersweet Shakespearean tragicomedy that brought Dame Judi back to Stratford two winters ago to play the wise and wry Countess. She returns to take part in what is supposed to be the Christmas treat of the Complete Works Festival. Unfortunately, almost everything about this venture (where Fifties New Look meets olde worlde Jacobean) feels ersatz and a poor replacement for the real thing. The songs themselves range from sub-Gilbert and Sullivan (in the through-sung farcical ensemble sequence where Haydn Gwynne's Mistress Page and Alexandra Gilbreath's Mistress Ford trick Falstaff into the laundry basket which is taken out and tipped in the Thames), to a whooping hillbilly hoe-down in the "Merry Wives" number, to a tango for men, Hollywood tap, and Lloyd-Webber-like ballads for the young love-interest (Martin Crewes and Scarlett Strallen). There isn't an atom of originality in any of it and a woeful lack of polish in the execution. Simon Callow as Falstaff is a plucky substitute for the glorious Desmond Barrit who had to withdraw because of a foot infection. I'm afraid to say, though, that his booming heartiness kept putting me in mind of a slightly brainier Brian Blessed, while Brendan O'Hea's leather-clad swaggering Pistol is a dead ringer for Russell Brand. Ironically, given that the obsessively jealous Ford is played by Alastair McGowan, it is other members of the cast who occasionally make you feel that the RSC has teamed up with Stars in their Eyes. There's a point early on in this musical when Judi Dench, as the frizzy-haired Cockney housekeeper and go-between Mistress Quickly, bustles on and does a comic double-take at one of the dinky half-timbered houses that dot the set. Because it's in perspective, she is a head taller than it is and this scenic device puzzles her. For some members of the audience, though, there will be another less funny dimension to this theatrical in-joke, for Dench is also much bigger than the material in this well-meaning but obdurately uninspired piece, which has a score by Paul Englishby and lyrics by Ranjit Bolt. Englishby has written some excellent incidental music for earlier productions by the director of the show, Gregory Doran. They include Sejanus and All's Well that Ends Well, the bittersweet Shakespearean tragicomedy that brought Dame Judi back to Stratford two winters ago to play the wise and wry Countess. She returns to take part in what is supposed to be the Christmas treat of the Complete Works Festival. Unfortunately, almost everything about this venture (where Fifties New Look meets olde worlde Jacobean) feels ersatz and a poor replacement for the real thing. The songs themselves range from sub-Gilbert and Sullivan (in the through-sung farcical ensemble sequence where Haydn Gwynne's Mistress Page and Alexandra Gilbreath's Mistress Ford trick Falstaff into the laundry basket which is taken out and tipped in the Thames), to a whooping hillbilly hoe-down in the "Merry Wives" number, to a tango for men, Hollywood tap, and Lloyd-Webber-like ballads for the young love-interest (Martin Crewes and Scarlett Strallen). There isn't an atom of originality in any of it and a woeful lack of polish in the execution. Simon Callow as Falstaff is a plucky substitute for the glorious Desmond Barrit who had to withdraw because of a foot infection. I'm afraid to say, though, that his booming heartiness kept putting me in mind of a slightly brainier Brian Blessed, while Brendan O'Hea's leather-clad swaggering Pistol is a dead ringer for Russell Brand. Ironically, given that the obsessively jealous Ford is played by Alastair McGowan, it is other members of the cast who occasionally make you feel that the RSC has teamed up with Stars in their Eyes.
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