The Merry Wives of Windsor
1980: Jack Manning

This is one of the nine plays produced chiefly for school audiences in the late 1970s and 1980s under the optimistically inclusive name “The Plays of William Shakespeare”. All of them are barely adequate in terms of production values, and while some of them have flashes of outstanding acting, this is not one of them: the acting is adequate, for the most part, but if there is any real insight to be brought to this lively but shallow play, it isn’t manifest here.

Acted in traditional costumes on a replica of the Globe theater in Hollywood (not the Globe in London) with fairly traditional sets and costumes, it is not overly cut. Accordingly, it will provide a serviceable representation of the play: the underlying cleverness of the plot is not obscured by any excessive preoccupation with nuance or high concept.

Image quality on the DVD is exceedingly poor — even at minimum magnification, the picture is blurry, and there is an annoying hum behind some of the sound.

Completists may want to see this; as a first approach for students, indeed, one could do worse. The newer Globe production (2011), however, would provide a more or less equivalent approach with superior execution at almost every front.

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