Wonderfully acted ‘Wives of Windsor’ packed with laughs

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The Utah Shakespeare Festival’s "The Merry Wives of Windsor" reminds us that you don’t need a complicated farcical plot to create a nonstop evening of laughs. Peter Amster’s take on this blissful nonsense is clean, superbly acted and visually alluring.

Simply put: The braggart, gluttonous Sir John Falstaff (remember him from the Henry IV plays?) is convinced two noble, married ladies have the hots for him. He sends them identical love letters. The women compare notes and scheme to make Falstaff regret his naughtiness. Trouble is, one of the husbands believes his wife really is cheating on him, and so he has to be dealt with as well.

It all ends in what looks like a magical forest, complete with candle-lit fairies. Falstaff may be a cad, but the characters seem to feel he’s their cad; they tolerate him with affectionate punishments no more severe than being tricked into being imprisoned in a basket full of soiled laundry.

There are other plots, of course, including one involving a competition to see who is good enough to marry the pretty young female ingenue (Sara J. Griffin). No surprise: The winner is the prettiest, young male gentleman (Jeb Burris).

Amster grounds the characters’ frantic behavior in reality. The role of Falstaff is an actor’s blessing, and the crazy-eyed, robust, boisterous, grand-voiced Roderick Peeples seems to know that. He’s so overblown likable that you can’t help but root for him.

Melinda Pfundstein and Jacqueline Antaramian make for eloquent ladies who admirably tolerate the foolishness about them. Both are very attractive women, but in very different ways; their appearance and mannerisms complement one another.

The exaggerated comedy is enhanced by the likes of, among others, Matt Holzfeind as the hysterically foppish, reluctant groom-to-be Slender, and John G. Preston as a gentleman who dons a dismal, belly-laugh-worthy disguise to get the goods on his wife.

Occasionally, the comedy is overstated. Amster is too on-target most of the time to fall victim to the regrettable goofiness.

But so much of this show is so organically humorous that it feels like a romance.

Sure, it’s funny. Better yet, though, it’s so human that it’s touching.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com.You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.