Merry Wives of Windsor, The

Synopsis: A video recording of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 1998 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor directed by Daniel Fish and set in a Catskills holiday resort in the 1950s. David Sabin is Falstaff.
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 25 Apr 1998

Director

Daniel Fish

Writer

William Shakespeare

Production Design

James Kronzer

Costume

Kaye Voyce

Choreographer

Peter Pucci

Cast

Notes: WAPAVA also recorded the performance at Carter Barron on 9 June 1999.
General: In an interview on the Shakespeare Theatre Company website (accessed 11/2007) Fish gives his reasons for setting the play in 1950s America - , "we think of a time when repression and conformity gave way to a new freedom of expression and liberality. Shakespeare’s plays, all of them, are replete with this exact transformation. He is always concerned with what is irrepressible in human nature. In the case of Merry Wives, it’s jealousy, love and lust. They’re the same ideas we see in Othello, told from a comedic point of view."
History: Produced by the Shakespeare Theatre at the Lansburgh, Washington, DC, 24 March-10 May 1998; and at the Shakespeare Theatre Free for All at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre, Washington, DC, 5-20 June 1999.
Reviews: Johnson-Haddad, Miranda. Shakespeare Bulletin 17, no. 2 (1999).

British Universities Film & Video Council