A beautiful Pittsburgh park, Shakespeare and … Madonna? Yes, that’s an ideal Saturday afternoon.
For the 22nd season running, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks is staging one of The Bard’s immortal plays throughout the city’s lovely public outdoor settings. This weekend and next, they are at Highland Park, filling the air with words, song and laughter with “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
It may not be one of Shakespeare’s most-performed plays, but the comedy packs plenty of fun, romance and hilarity into less than two hours, especially with such a capable and nimble cast.
Whie it doesn’t carry the weight of “Hamlet” or “Romeo and Juliet,” “Merry Wives” has the wordplay, trickery and mischief that many of Shakespeare’s comedies exemplify. And PSiP has made it even better by giving it a distinctly ’80s club feel.
With live music (and excellent selections by music director Matt Calvetti), the cast is able to intersperse disco and dance songs from the 1970s and ’80s, performed live and sung by the cast. From momentary snippets to full-on numbers, the play features tunes like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics, “It’s Raining Men” by the Weather Girls and “Like a Virgin” by Madonna.
After audience members had settled beneath the shade of trees on blankets and camp chairs around the performance space on Saturday afternoon, the cast entered the sparse but brightly colored “stage” to sing and gambol about. Then, the plot kicked into gear.
There are two slightly intertwined plotlines in “Merry Wives.” One involves Falstaff (Joanna Getting with a gripping performance), a knight who appears in several of Shakespeare’s plays. He is in the town of Windsor and attempts to woo two merry married women, Mistress Ford (Cassandra Hackbart) and Mistress Page (Christopher Rone). Neither of them have any interest in him, and find immediately that he has sent them the same love letter. The hijinks that the two ladies conjure as revenge left Saturday afternoon’s audience in stitches.
The other plotline involves the marriage of Mistress Page’s daughter, Anne (Meredith Kokur). She has three suitors, all played by Allie Burns with different costumes and accents. One is favored by her father, Mister Page (Alvaro Munoz), one by her mother and one by the bride herself. It takes a tricksy plan between Anne Page, the clever Fenton and Pastor Evans (Ivy Mackinson) to ensure the love match comes to fruition.
Costume designer Ricky Lyle did a standout job with this play, pulling together a variety of very ’80s pieces from Madonna’s style to punk looks to some Devo-like touches. The cast’s teased hair and makeup looks really made it feel retro, as did the MTV-bright colors and glitter of the set and props by designer Samantha Kuchta.
It isn’t said enough that Shakespeare is a master of slapstick, and this cast really highlighted the physicality of “Merry Wives,” especially Getting’s Falstaff. The actor is also excellent at bringing out the lascivious tone and double entendre in Shakespeare’s dialogue — as are both Hackbart and Rone as the two wives. Munoz and Rob Masterson, who plays Mister Ford, make a dynamic duo, Changing the tone, Kokur’s Anne Page is charming and genuine.
But the best player in this cast is Burns as the three suitors, Dr. Caius, Slender and Fenton. There is at least one scene where she has to run and leap offstage to quickly change accents and accessories to become one of the other suitors, and it’s one of the biggest laughs of the production.
As in many of Shakespeare’s plays, the concepts of gender and sexuality are fluid and less rigid in “Merry Wives,” a fact that this production fully explores through its casting, style and setting. In her Note from the Director in the program, director Cat Aceto wrote, “For me, the tranlation to the ’80s matches perfectly with the spirit of the play. Everyone is pushing against the rules governing gender, sexuality, behavior and self-expression.”
Along with bending the rules of sexuality, gender, friendship and romance, this production also bends the rules of space and time; references to Sidney Crosby, the Monongahela River, Heinz Chapel and even the Liberty Tubes were woven into the script and get chuckles every time.
Whether you’re a fan of strolling through the park, a good Shakespeare play or a great Pat Benatar tune, for a good time head to Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks this September and October.
“The Merry Wives of Windsor” will be performed at various parks around Pittsburgh on weekends through Oct. 11. To learn more about performance times, visit pittsburghshakespeare.org.
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