Falstaffian wit is not the half of it.
Five hundred years on from Shakespeare’s day The Synergy Theatre have latched onto an English fondness for open air entertainment and a summer picnic, choosing three wonderful locations for their performances this year: Crouch Gardens Seaford, Lewes Priory Park and, this coming weekend, Village Green Kingston, near Lewes.
The Priory ruins are a perfect backdrop for this comedy, set in the neighbourhood of Windsor.
Rumoured to have been written at Queen Elizabeth I’s request – she wanted to see Falstaff in love - it features familiar cuckolds and hood-winking. Falstaff is perhaps not quite as corpulent as Shakespeare intended, if true to the adjective in use today for the rambunctious and bawdy-humoured.
The cast is a bit uneven but Charlotte Tayler stands out as Mistress Margaret Page. The main thing is the company are clearly enjoying it as much as the audience.
Shenanigans with a laundry basket of dirty linen and two identical letters are easy to watch and it’s fun to spot familiar lines in common parlance today, such as: “what the dickens?”, “this is the short and long of it”, “as good luck would have it”, and, of course, “the world’s mine oyster”.
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