George Fouracres stars at Shakespeare's Globe

Last time George Fouracres was on stage he was owning it with a exuberant caricature of  imperious, petulant  Andrew Lloyd Webber in Flo and Joan’s One Man Musical.

Well, he brings a similar irrepressible energy to Sir John Falstaff – a role that demands such rambunctiousness – in the new version of The Merry Wives Of Windsor at Shakespeare’s Globe. 

While commanding the space yet again, he and director Sean Holmes have also widened out the character. Not literally – Fouracres is not compelled to wear the customary fat suit in these sweltering temperatures – but in allowing him to evolve beyond  the lascivious, scheming, drunken buffoon into a figure worthy of pity and pathos, albeit still of a comic flavour.

After barrelling into Windsor – dressed in visceral red in contrast to the muted bucolic greens of the locals – he connives to woo two wealthy married women in the hope of securing some of their fortune. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page immediately wise up to his plans and string him along for the craic, leading to humiliation upon humiliation for the poor fellow.

Yet by allowing a genuine affection to develop between Falstaff and Mistress Ford, Sir John becomes a sympathetic figure, a lovelorn loser forever thwarted by circumstances forged by his own desperation.

The set-piece of him being smuggled out of the Ford household in a basket full of dirty laundry is executed with great verve, and Falstaff’s subsequent rant at the indignity of being dumped into a muddy ditch is Fouracres at his blustery best.

But he’s not the only star. As Mr Page, Jolyon Coy is consistently strong, peaking in a wonderfully unhinged rant, driven mad by paranoid jealousy at his wife’s possible betrayal. Emma Pallant and Katherine Pearce have fun as Mistresses Page and Ford, while Sophie Russel is quietly commanding in the canny, if less showy, role of Mistress Quickly.

However, there is one very weak player in all this, and it's a certain West Midlands-born Bard. While there might not be much flab on Fouracres’s Falstaff, there’s plenty in the writing, especially the subplot, which often relies on clunking national stereotypes and Elizabethan double entendres for its broadest of humour. 

Holmes has decided to lean into this and every gag is played hard, delivered with an exaggerated smugness as to how witty and clever the line is that is ill-earned. If you think you don’t like Shakespearean comedies, this will not be the production to change your mind.

As Doctor Caius, Adam Wadsworth’s command of the French psyche makes Allo Allo look like Voltaire, yelling ‘Bugger!’ every time he enters – actually a mangling of ‘By God!’, but by god it's annoying. There are also some ‘comedy’ lederhosen-wearing Germans, while Welshman Hugh Evans (Samuel Creasy) is so strongly accented and high of pitch that some lines become indistinct in the open-air setting. 

There’s also a truly awful classroom scene with baffling exchanges such as ‘William, how many numbers is in nouns?’ ‘Two’ ‘Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say, "’Od’s nouns"’ delivered as if it were side-splitting. (After looking it up  I can explain that ‘Od's ‘ouns’ is a corruption of the 17th Century profanity ‘God's wounds’ which Mistress Quickly has here corrupted again)

Scenes such as this slow down the action in what turns out to be a workmanlike production that sometimes sparks with comic flair but is elsewhere leaden in its adherence to Shakespeare's humour that's so heavy-handed to modern ears.

•The Merry Wives Of Windsor is at Shakespeare's Globe until September 20

Review date: 11 Jul 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Shakespeare's Globe