THEATRE REVIEW

JUNE 2026 | Volume 264

 

The last time I reviewed The Merry Wives of Windsor at Bard on the Beach, in 2012, director Johnna Wright set the play in a 1960s country and western bar. Here is some of what I had to say about the play and that production: “my least favourite play in the canon”; “Falstaff who is such a brilliant character in the Henry plays is reduced to a buffoon”; “Shakespeare’s largely incomprehensible plot is barely a concern here;” “most of the production’s pleasures come from its musical numbers.”

I will say the same againafter seeing Rebecca Northan’sproduction that opens Bard’s 2026 season. The setting: a contemporary soccer-mad Vancouver suburb.Like Wright, Northan appears to understand that the play itself is so bad you have to discard most of Shakespeare and develop a broad comic concept with the leftover pieces.

In 2012, Falstaff was played by Ashley Wright, who plays him again here.The 2012 production was a popular success and winner of multiple Jessie Richardson awards. It was remounted in 2016, also very successfully. Obviously, my opinion was an outlier then and may very well be again now.

Here’s what remains of Shakespeare’s play. Falstaff aims to seduce two wives, Mrs. Ford (Melissa Oei) and Mrs. Page (Jennifer Lines). They discover his plot and take revenge together. Husband Mr. Page (Munish Sharma) is easygoing, laissez-faire; Mr. Ford (Craig Erickson) is violently jealous. Meanwhile, three suitors vie for the hand of daughter Anne Page (Rachel Angco): Slender (Sara Vickruck), Dr. Caius (Raf Rogers) and Fenton (Cameron Grant).

Some of the actors shine despite the material. The merry wives, Oei and Lines, are lively and charming as they go about humiliating Falstaff. Erickson plays apoplectic with great aplomb, and Rogers’ riotous Caius is the funniest character onstage with his Clouseau-like French accent. As pastor Evans, unrecognizable in a long gray beard and toque, Zahf Paroo has some wonderful moments, including a remarkable backwards leap in a sauna where he is naked but for a small towel he holds over his privates.

In addition to the sauna, scenes take place in a life drawing class, a yoga class and twice nearly identically in a locker room.There’s also a silly anachronistic sword fight. Slender’s motivation for marrying Anne Page is to gain Instagram followers. Every time Dr. Caius is mentioned, someone points out that he’s only a chiropractor. Ha haha. Falstaff gets his comic punishment on a soccer pitch, a scene as lamely ridiculous as anything I’ve seen on the Bard stage. The opening night audience appeared to love it.

Karaoke-style musical numbers scattered throughout the production work to lift the material and a couple are killers thanks to Lisa Goebel’s slick choreography: one in which the women sing and dance while on wheeled chairs, and a rousing, climactic “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Don’t we all. Don’t we all.

 

 

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