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STAGE REVIEW

Creative cast makes ‘Wives’ more the merrier

Richard Snee and Ruby Rose Fox in “The Merry Wives of Windsor’’ at Davis Square Theatre. STRATTON MCCRADY

SOMERVILLE - Sir John Falstaff is the Homer Simpson of the Shakespeare canon: a big-bellied figure of gargantuan appetites, unable to say no to his id, forever scheming, forever receiving his humiliating comeuppance.

In the “Henry IV’’ plays, of course, there is also a tragic dimension to the fat knight. When Falstaff is ultimately repudiated by Prince Hal, his onetime boon companion, it’s a moment to crack the heart.

But lore has it that Queen Elizabeth became so enamored of Falstaff that she expressed a wish to see a comedy built entirely around him, and that Shakespeare complied by writing “The Merry Wives of Windsor.’’ Whether that account is true or not, the Falstaff of “Merry Wives’’ does stand as a purely comic figure, and the play itself has a tossed-off, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink quality.

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That randomness and slightness has liberated director Steven Barkhimer and his well-chosen cast, including Richard Snee as Falstaff, to simply cut loose in a creative, freewheeling, and very entertaining Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of “Merry Wives.’’

Barkhimer doesn’t stint on the slapstick or sight gags, and he keeps the production revved up to a sufficiently high energy level that the actors don’t just make entrances and exits but rather seem to bound onto and off the stage. The ensemble, featuring the talented likes of Marianna Bassham, Bill Barclay, Gabriel Kuttner, and Michael Forden Walker, seems to be having the time of their lives, unconstrained by any sense of obligation to a masterpiece, which “Merry Wives’’ decidedly is not.

Standing at the center of it all is Snee, tricked out with a Santa Clausian paunch that Falstaff pats with satisfaction as he contemplates his own magnificence. Snee is adept at the art of doing a lot by doing a little; he knows just when to raise a Falstaffian eyebrow, when to relax into a self-satisfied smile, when to let the action eddy around him and when to lead the charge. He finds the necessary balance between craftiness and cluelessness.

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Both qualities are immediately on display when we first see Falstaff with a couple of other ne’er-do-wells at the Garter Inn. Sir John is trying to figure out a way to solve his cash-flow problem, and, given his invincible ego, it’s perhaps not surprising that his solution relies on his presumed irresistibility to women. Falstaff intends to seduce Mistress Page (Esme Allen, in an excellent, witty performance) and Mistress Ford (Bassham), the wives of two rich men, thereby gaining access to the family fortunes.

But their husbands, Master Ford (Forden Walker) and Master Page (John Greene), get wind of his scheme. Master Ford, not trusting his wife, disguises himself in a false nose and eyeglasses and offers to pay Falstaff to woo Mistress Ford. Forden Walker seethes entertainingly as Ford has to listen to Falstaff disparage him as a cuckold-to-be.

Meanwhile, the two merry wives are also on to Falstaff. Having received identical woo-pitching letters from him, they resolve to team up and have some sport with the old lecher by acting as though they welcome his amorous advances. This paves the way for a couple of amusing encounters between Snee and Bassham - the former preening, the latter swooning. Persuaded to hide in a laundry basket full of smelly garments, poor Falstaff is deposited from there into the equally smelly Thames.

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No Shakespeare comedy would be complete without a confusing subplot. Here it involves three men who are vying for the hand of Mistress Page’s daughter, Anne, played by Lydia Barnett-Mulligan. One of them, Slender (well played by Barclay) is a prissy and high-strung bundle of nerves; another is an unassuming lad named Fenton (also played by Barclay), whom Anne really wants to marry; and the third is a French physician named Dr. Caius, played by Barnett-Mulligan with an accent outlandish enough to make Inspector Clouseau blush.

Before “Merry Wives’’ ends, elaborate tricks will be played on the unwelcome suitors and on Falstaff. He is bamboozled nearly out of his wits in the penultimate scene, a phantasmagoria that conjures the otherworldly aura of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ (which Actors’ Shakespeare Project has performed in the past couple of years, along with the “Henry IV’’ plays).

Like Scrooge, he’s scared straight, although one suspects it will not take in Falstaff’s case. No matter. Who wants a reformed Falstaff, anyway? Of more importance is the fact that as we gird for the long winter ahead, “Merry Wives’’ serves as a bit of sustaining comic warmth.


Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.