There is a story that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in response to a request from Elizabeth I. She had laughed at the outrageous antics of Sir John Falstaff in the Henry IV plays and asked if the playwright would revive the character as ‘Falstaff in love.’ If the story is true, Shakespeare built in a joke on the queen as there is no love in the character of Falstaff except for himself.
This vain, lecherous knight plans to seduce two women, Mrs Ford and Mrs Page, but sends each a letter intended for the other. The women, who are friends, realise his intentions and sets out to trick him with booby-trapped assignations while promising sexual delights. ‘The women will stand victorious,’ they say in this production of the play as a cross between opera and farce.
So far so Shakespeare but this production is called a ‘guerilla opera’ and is played by the Queer Voices Opera Company which boasts it is the only queer opera collective in Norway. The dialogue is in English with songs in Norwegian with unobtrusive surtitling.
The stand-out star of the evening is Therese-Angelie Khachik playing Mrs Ford with a voice to stop your heart. She commands the stage despite performing with nothing on but a fluffy white rug from IKEA and a body stocking.
True to form, gender disruption is the name of the game. The play is spared down to the basic plot lines and characters with modern, queer-inclusive twists.
Falstaff is played by Mae Heydorn in a multicoloured sequinned cloak, red tights and a red studded kink collar. Mr Ford is Patrick Egersborg in a dinner jacket and a skirt. A duet where the two, each in high heels, stalk around each other while singing about seducing Mrs Ford is reminiscent of a 1930s Berlin cabaret.
In the sub-plot, instead of the two men her parents have lined up for her, Anna wants her own choice. She wants to marry Fenton who is played by a woman, Eldrid Gorset giving us another fine voice. The duet between Fenton and Anne, played by Vilde Johnsbraten, is one of the high points of an evening which has more than a couple of them.
This colourful evening which is part of the Grimeborne Opera Festival keeps the pace on a minimal set with unobtrusive but complementary music to the Battles of the Sexes theme. There are a jealous husband, lecherous seducer and scheming woman, but men come of very much the worst in these skirmishes, with lines like, ‘Men are so greedy no blow is too brutal for them….All men are the same, quite ready to be fooled.’
I never imagined a Shakespearean adaptation performed as an opera in Norwegian would keep me spellbound. It did.