the merry wives of windsor…

Moira and I went along to Cinema de Lux last night to see the live-screening version of the RSC’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, directed by Fiona Laird. Although it’s absolutely brilliant that live-screening provides an opportunity to watch the RSC perform from Bristol, for me it’s not quite the same as being a member of the ‘real’ audience at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford (from my somewhat limited experience of these things, cinema audiences don’t applaud and I, for one, never feel an integral part of the live performance itself).  
Although I know the play quite well, I think this was the first time I’ve actually seen it performed for perhaps 50 years (if ever?). As you may know, it’s probably the most farcical of all Shakespeare’s comedies. Parts of the storyline seem very appropriate for today - as the play features that renown womaniser and sexual predator Sir John Falstaff (quite brilliantly played by David Troughton) endeavouring to seduce two women (again, convincingly and hilariously played by Rebecca Lacey and Beth Cordingly)… but with Shakespeare’s original setting transferred from middle-class Berkshire to metropolitan Essex and to a world of beauty salons and manicurists (the ‘Fat Woman of Brentford’ becoming the ‘Fat Woman of Brentwood’)… complete with estuary accents and wheelie bins!
It was a fun evening of exuberant, light-hearted entertainment… and I particularly liked the clever, over-the-top costume design (The Telegraph critic described it thus: “Elizabethan costume stylings, lashings of bling and dashes of ‘The Only Way Is Essex attitude’”).