The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare

Director: Christopher Luscombe

Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Serena Evans, Sarah Woodward, Andrew Havill, Richard Linnell, Paul Woodson, Gregory Gudgeon, Michael Garner, Ceri-Lyn Cissone

The tables are turned on wily seducer Falstaff in the Bard's brilliantly constructed farce, recorded during the 2010 'Kings and Rogues' season at Shakespeare's Globe. One of Shakespeare's most accessible plays, 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' is often cited as a forerunner of the modern situation comedy and has even been claimed as a major influence on 'Fawlty Towers'! First staged at the Globe in 2008, this very physical production of the spirited romp has a fabulously frisky Christopher Benjamin labouring beneath a fat suit and luxuriant beard as rotund, pompous buffoon Sir John Falstaff. Finding himself short of cash on arrival in Windsor, the roguish Falstaff resolves to seduce a pair of wealthy married women: Mistress Page (Serena Evans) and Mistress Ford (Sarah Woodward). The ladies quickly twig that he has sent them identical love letters. Having no interest in the overweight would-be seducer, they decide to turn the tables with a series of humiliating assignations and a very smelly laundry basket. Shakespeare's only play about the middle classes, the colourful 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' combines slapstick, farce and bawdy humour in a style that will be instantly recognisable to modern audiences.

Ticket information

Ticket price: 3600 HUF

Tickets are available at the Cassa of the Urania National Filmtheater (open every day 11:00-20:30, Credit Cards are accepted) and in the Ticket Sale System of Jegymester (available in English too)

www.jegymester.hu