REVIEW: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR at the HOPE THEATRE 17 – 21 February 2026
'feel-good energy … and filled with loving details‘ ★★★ ½
You know when a hit TV show has a fun side character that gets infinitely more popular than the leads, and inevitably gets their own spin off? That's how Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor came to be.
Merry Wives follows Prince Hal's old pal Falstaff. Henry IV ends with the prince maturing and rejecting Falstaff for his alcoholic, lecherous, a-moral ways. Merry Wives gives him a high-five and goes all in. The result is a beer-drenched, sex-comedy romp, here set in a council estate boozer in the early 2000s. Think football chants and spray tan glory and bellies hanging out of too-short shirts.
The plot….well, the plot isn't the point. But briefly: Falstaff needs money and wants sex. He decides to hit two birds with one stone by courting some rich wives: Alice Ford (Tash Tomlinson) and Mistress Page (Bronwyn Davies). He swears his undying love to each—but is dumb enough to do so in identical letters. The women realise his game and put their heads together to have some fun. Meanwhile, young Anne Page (Ella McCarthy) is fighting to avoid her gaggle of terrible suitors (delightfully sleazy Erin Chen) and marry Fenton, the person she loves (Maggie). Mistress Quickly (Phoebe Moore) joins the plotting as she watches her pub descend into chaos.
First of all, this is a gigantic cast for a pub theatre. Most fringe productions of Shakespeare trim characters and combine lines wherever they can. Not director Grace Darvill's version. When they're not reciting verse, the 12-strong ensemble is quipping at the audience and lounging around the space, cuddling up or eating snacks. The vibe is helped by some method acting tricks: two performers a night are actually wasted. It's a credit to everyone's acting-drunk skills that it was hard to tell who they were.
Perhaps strangely for a plot centred around cheating and lying and revenge, one of this show's greatest strengths is its feel-good energy. Almost everyone is deeply flawed but still sympathetic. Is Falstaff a terrible person? Probably. But as played by Tanner, with just a spark of vulnerability beneath the 8-pints-in tone, we occasionally like him anyway. Everyone gets the chance to be supremely silly, including the ingénues Anne and Fenton, who balance their comedy and yearning well. Similarly to how Falstaff stole the show in Henry IV, Mistress Quickly quite often steals it here (or at least steals the scene)—Moore is utterly convincing as the quip-spouting, world-wise landlady.
The production is also filled with loving details that update it from its original Tudor setting—from a 'Royal Mail' costume to the karaoke fragments that take us energetically from scene to scene.
Where things get wobbly, amid this mass of fun, is in the clarity. The friend I was seeing the show with leaned over in the interval and said that, one, he was having a great time, but two, would I please explain what was happening? It sometimes feels like Merry Wives throws everything at you, all at once. It's easy to be swept along in the glee of it all—it's harder to get properly invested, especially if you come in with no clue who anyone is.
This was a particular shame whenever the show hinted at its ability to make a deeper point, whether that be in casting Anne with a same-sex love interest or making Alice Ford's feelings for Falstaff more complex than Shakespeare perhaps intended. I'd be interested to see what this production could be if it dug into the dramaturgy, relationship exploration and structure a bit more, without losing its bubbling charm.
Overall, however, Merry Wives bills itself as 'a riotous evening of revelry, romance and revenge'—and it lives up to that promise.
Director/producer: Grace Darvill
Lighting & sound designer: Lenny
Stage manager/videographer: Theo Darvill
Artist: Juliana Gutierrez
Photographer: Em Drake
Cast
Alice Ford: Tash Tomlinson
Ford: Django Bevan
Mistress Page: Bronwyn Davies
Page: Cameron Sinclair Harris
Falstaff: James Tanner
Anne Page: Ella McCarthy
Pistol/Falstaff entourage: Lee Hatsumi Mayer
Fenton/Robin/Simple: Maggie
Dr Caius/ Slender: Erin Chen
Hugh Evans: Zoë Pallant-Sidaway
Shallow/Host: Zoe Chapman
Quickly: Phoebe Moore
