Review

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINSOR

 

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

 

California Shakespeare opens its summer season with a delightful comedy: THE MERRY WIVES WINSOR. The show is cast, in part, with puppets. The puppetry adds significantly to the comedy by rendering the show into a colorful animated cartoon. The puppets also serve to make the comedy more accessible to children, and adults, who would otherwise have difficulty gleaning the humor embedded in the Elizabethan English.

 

Puppet designers Jon Ludwig and Jason Hines have peopled the stage of Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, with dozens of puppets of various evolutions. The puppets range in complexity and size according to their social status within the play: a simple servant is a block of wood with few moving parts, while the puppet of Sir John Falstaff is nearly the size of a Macy’s Parade Float and completely envelops puppeteer-actor Ron Campbell.

 

The psychology of puppetry is strangely and magically enchanting: as quickly as the puppeteer establishes the character of his or her puppet, the audience subconsciously endows that puppet with all the attributes and qualities of the character it represents. At the final curtain, when the puppet costume is hoisted off of Ron Campbell, one continues to see the now vacant costume as Falstaff and Ron Campbell as an ambitious stagehand who had strenuously manipulated and voiced the giant costume.

 

To add to the cartoon quality, set designer Scott Bradley has made the traditional Windsor setting look like an architectural amalgam of the Land of Oz, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and Alice’s Wonderland.

 

To his credit, director Sean Daniels included several non-puppets on stage. Master Ford, played by Anthony Fusco, is not a puppet yet he is a visual riot: strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage as the tortured, jealous husband who is devoured by his own demon suspicions regarding the fidelity of his clever wife. MR Fusco masterfully injects a heaping measure of humor to his character via facial expression, antic movements and bizarre body language.

 

Both Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, the title characters, are also non-puppets, as is Master Page. They interact so fluidly with the puppets, one would assume they have been living in puppet land all their lives.

 

Movies, like Disney’s PINOCCHIO, Kubrick’s SPACE ODESSY, Steven Spielberg’s ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and Ridley Scott’s BLADE RUNNER, all explore the question: When do humanoids and androids cross the line to become human? This summer the answer is simple: when the curtain goes up at the California Shakespeare Theater. For tickets to an evening you and your family will immensely enjoy, call the box office at 650 327-1221.