STAGE REVIEW : Uneven but Merry ‘Wives of Windsor’

The wives may be merry, but it falls to the husbands and suitors to breathe serious comic life into the GroveShakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

This final show of the summer at Garden Grove’s Festival Amphitheater is a good-humored stampede through Elizabethan countrified society, led by Harry Frazier in the role he was born to play: the rotund, rosy-cheeked, cheeky soldier Falstaff, “as subject to heat as butter” and as self-deluded as an inflated ostrich.

Overflowing exuberance (if no novelty) marks director Richard Risso’s rowdy approach to this two-track comedy. The Fat Knight is bitterly rewarded by the two married women he attempts to simultaneously and reprehensibly seduce. And the courtship of the marriageable daughter of one of them by three bounders in pursuit of her good dowry--”Seven hundred pounds and possibilities is good”--comes to a satisfying end.

The sorry Falstaff is battered and drenched for his pains by the objects of his desire, while Cupid undoes cupidity when Anne (pert Amy Griffin) elopes with Fenton (Steven Opyrchal), the man she loves, hoodwinking her parents and the fortune-hunters.

There is nothing to look for in “Merry Wives” beyond sheer merriment, a climate that is kinder to GroveShakespeare’s mix of a handful of pros and a lot of practiced amateurs. The latter rely mostly with success on British models to see them through. The former take to the high wire, with Rob Monroe as Anne’s foppish suitor Slender, and Ron Campbell as his peripatetic French counterpart, Dr. Caius, leading the parade.

Monroe is a contorting mass of giggles as the bashful Slender, who, if he won her, wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do with the bride his uncle Shallow (Cole Andersen) is ordering him to take. And Ron Campbell delivers a zany caricature of the wacky Caius, even if he lets his French accent slip into something suspiciously Italian now and then. Both portraits are astute and hilarious.

It was touch and go at Saturday’s opening, but Charles Carroll triumphed over what sounded like creeping laryngitis to give a generous and richly textured performance as Master Ford, the husband who, crazed by the fear of being cuckolded, takes matters into his own hands.

Teri Ciranna is a two-fisted matchmaker as Mistress Quickly, the advance infantry for Dr. Caius and a meddling go-between for Falstaff and his undoers.

But it is those clever undoers--Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (Meg Gilbert and Paula Kay Perry, respectively)--who laugh last and loudest as they put Falstaff through the wringer.

Speaking of which, except for a few ruffled feathers (on his hat), Frazier comes out of his soaking in the River Thames conspicuously blow-dried. This knight, who proclaims to have “a kind of alacrity in sinking,” surfaces with his ruddiness and fluffy, ample beard intact. Not a limp strand to be seen.

Mark O’Bar, Matthew Walker and Roger Axworthy (a Shakespearean name if ever there were one) bring up the rear as Falstaff’s trusty phalanx of sack-loving followers: Nym, Pistol and Bardolph respectively. But Andy Griggs is entirely overqualified as their innkeeper. This is a host with more presence than the job demands--a waste in a company that could have used his talents better.

The stage is simply set by designer John Iacovelli, with a Tudor house at each end separated by a public thoroughfare and backed by a painted field of fresh-mown hay. Its mood is jocular and bucolic and the costumes (by A. Laura Brody and Berglind Gardar) would have been equally sound were it not for the shoes. Most of them are decidedly modern. Weejuns in the time of Elizabeth I?

Par for the course for the ongoing curious contradictions that spell the name GroveShakespeare. But with W. Stuart McDowell, a new man, at the helm, it’s the perfect time to make a clean sweep and spruce up the act.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor,” GroveShakespeare, Festival Amphitheatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Wednesdays-Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 26. $18-$25; (714) 636-7213. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Harry Frazier: Sir John Falstaff

Roger Axworthy: Bardolph

Matthew Walker: Pistol

Mark O’Bar: Nym

Andy Griggs: Host

Ron Campbell: Dr. Caius

Teri Ciranna: Mistress Quickly

Charles Carroll: Master Frank Ford

Meg Gilbert: Mistress Alice Ford

Dan Collins: Master George Page

Paula Kay Perry: Mistress Margaret Page

Amy Griffin: Anne Page

Steven Opyrchal: Fenton

Cole Andersen: Shallow

Rob Monroe: Abraham Slender

Morgan Rusler: Sir Hugh Evans

Joseph Foss: Peter Simple

David Tik-tin: Robin

Peter Zazzali: John Rugby

Ted Jackson: John

Michael Ambrosio: Robert

Shakespeare’s comedy produced in association with the Leo Freedman Foundation. Director Richard Risso. Sets John Iacovelli. Lights Bill Georges. Costumes A. Laura Brody, Berglind Gardar. Sound Donald Peterson Jr. Vocal director Kathryn Maes. Music Chuck Estes. Choreographer Art Manke. Production manager Richard K. Hess. Stage manager Jennifer L. Clark.