“The Merry Wives of Windsor “ is rough yet funny

According to legend, Queen Elizabeth I liked the character Falstaff so much that she requested a comedy where he was the main character. Shakespeare fulfilled the royal request with The Merry Wives of Windsor, which has been delighting playgoers ever since.

The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ kicks off what promises to be a new series under the collective title “Rogue Shakespeare” with The Merry Wives of Windsor. In a Rogue Shakespeare production, there is no director or design team. The actors come in on the first day of rehearsals with their parts completely memorized. They spend the next week figuring out blocking and business, relying on the text, their stage experience, and each other to create a fresh, fast-moving experience performance. In this way, modern audiences can glimpse a play as it possibly would have been presented in Shakespeare’s time.

The basic plot is simple. Sir John Falstaff, a dissolute, dishonorable knight in search of money, comes up with a scheme. He sends letters to Windsor matrons Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page in an attempt to seduce them and get money from them. However, the two women compare letters and come up with a plan to expose Falstaff before the entire town.

In the meantime, Mrs. Page’s daughter Anne finds herself with three suitors. One, the well-to-do Abraham Slender, is a naive simpleton and is the choice of Anne’s father. Another is Dr. Caius, a hot-rempered French immigrant whose social status makes him Anne’s mother’s choice. Finally, there is Fenton, who has neither a great fortune or social standing but who loves Anne deeply.

The cast, headed by Shakespeare Theatre favorites Jeffrey M. Bender as Falstaff and Patrick Toon as Welsh cleric Sir Hugh Evans, leads us through the broad comedy, upping their speed and agility as the show progresses.

As always with Shakespeare, it takes a little concentration on the audience’s part in the beginning to get familiar with relationships and plot points — especially when he used accents and malapropisms to evoke stereotypes of class and nationality in Elizabethan audiences.

It’s in the physical humor where the laughs most arise. Nowhere is this more evident than in Falstaff’s reactions to his derailed seduction, orchestrated by Ka-Ling Cheung’s Mrs. Page and Erin Partin’s Mrs. Ford, and his attempts to evade David Shih and Michael Stewart Allen as the suspicious and jealous Messrs. Page and Ford.

Less frenetic humor is provided by Emily S. Chang as Anne Page; Cole Henry Gilder as Slender; Chrustopher Sutton’s Dr. Caius; and Hassiem Muhammad’s Fenton. Alison Weller adds additional humor to the romances as the practical Mistress Quickly, collecting fees from all three suitors while promising to promote their suits to Anne.

The Shakespeare Theatre of NJ is to be commended for striking out in a new direction with Rogue Shakespeare. Based on their first try with The Merry Wives of Windsor, this experiment in staging is one that I would be interested in seeing applied to other plays. If this sounds intriguing to you too, by all means pay a visit to The Merry Wives of Windsor!

The Merry Wives of Windsor is presented by the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey at the F.M. Kirby Theatre on the campus of Drew University in Madison through Aug. 23. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to shakespearenj.org.