The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove gives Shakespeare a Beach Blanket Bingo makeover
Share
(left to right) Megan January (Nym), Evan Lugo (George Page), Abel Garcia (Frank Ford) and Sam Schneider (Pistol) in The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove. Photo by Jesus Lopez Vargas.
UC Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival turns The Merry Wives of Windsor into a 1950s SoCal beach musical, complete with retro surf culture
The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor at UC Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival, relocates the comedy to a Southern California beach town in the 1950s. The surf’s up, a chocolate-covered-banana stand is hopping and a washed-up Elvis-like rock star named Johnny Falstaff is trailing chaos.
Those merry wives aren’t actually all that merry about the state of their marriages. Margaret Page (Sonya Cooke) has lost all patience with her grinning, gadabout husband, George (Evan Lugo), who floats through life as though it were as lighthearted an affair as Beach Blanket Bingo. Margaret’s best friend, Alice Ford (Sarah Hentges), has more serious problems with her jealous husband, Frank (Abel Garcia), who suspects infidelity whenever she leaves the house.
The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove gives Shakespeare a Beach Blanket Bingo makeover — Los Angeles Times
