Festival poster designed by Rich Nelson at Kiku Obata & Co., courtesy of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Think of it as the Elizabethan version of Desperate Housewives—but less lurid. And funnier. And no one dies.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s only domestic comedy, was written in prose rather than verse; you don’t have to know anything about Elizabethan diction, or early European history, to follow the plot. Jesse Berger, who is making his directorial debut at this year’s Shakespeare Festival with Merry Wives, calls it “completely accessible, totally hilarious, and very physical.”
“If you’ve gone to a Shakespeare play in the past and felt like, ‘Oh God, I don’t understand a word, I’m so bored,’ this one will correct that,” he says. “The play is totally unique among Shakespeare’s oeuvre, in that it is about a community. It’s about everyday people, not kings and queens and fantasies and far-off lands. It doesn’t matter what period you set it in—when you see it, you say, ‘Oh yeah! I know that guy.’”
Berger is setting the play in the early 1920s: World War I vets are returning home, and the women’s movement is stirring. The sets reflect this, with a design that references both conservative Victorian architecture and the nascent Deco movement.
“That’s something we’re working on with the costume design as well,” Berger says. “Particularly the women, who are growing out of a pre-1920s, slightly more conservative look. Through the course of the play, they get a little more wild and a little more what we would consider typical 1920s—not quite flappers, though there’s a little bit of that going on.”
He also decided to set the action on a very particular date: July 4. Partly that was to acknowledge the play’s concern with community. “And,” Berger laughs, “it explains why everyone seems to have the day off.”
Composer Scott Killian is writing 1920s-era music for the show, and Berger says some of the music will take place live, onstage.
“Falstaff and his merry band of followers are sort of conceived as an Elizabethan marching band,” Berger explains, “so they’re going to play. Our actor who plays Falstaff sings a little bit, so I’m sure you’ll hear him doing a little Cab Calloway.”
Speaking of Falstaff, Berger acknowledges his appeal, but says he likes to remind people that Merry Wives is not just about this roly-poly, maladroit knight.
“There are so many wonderful characters in this play,” Berger says. “It’s a smorgasbord of funny, foolish people. Everyone is somehow free to act out their follies in this Fourth of July weekend in Windsor as we’ve imagined it.” Berger also notes: “It’s called the Merry Wives of Windsor—it’s about the women.” That includes not just Mistresses Ford and Page, who conspire to teach Falstaff a lesson, but young Anne Page, who is determined to marry for love, as well as poor Mistress Quickly, who serves as everyone’s messenger but hears sexual innuendo every time she eavesdrops. For Shakespeare neophytes, there couldn’t be a better play to start with, Berger says.
“Because of where we’ve chosen to set it, it’s going to be a little sexy, and it’s going to have a lot of great music from the ’20s, like the Charleston; there’ll be a little dancing,” he notes. “There’s no reason to be afraid of Shakespeare in Merry Wives of Windsor.”
May 20–June 14. Free. Green Show 6:30 p.m., play 8 p.m. For more information, call 314-531-9800 or go to sfstl.com.
