Summary 
Lively direction and a quick pace upon a handsome eighteenth-century staging, this is a classy small-town comedy that does not miss a beat even with a standby Falstaff. A furious Ford steals the show, although well-supported by colorful supporting characters in a humorous and light-hearted, if repetitive, entertainment.
Design
Directed by Frank Galati. Designed by Robert Perdziola. Lighting designed by Alan Brodie. Compositions and sound design by Josh Schmidt.
Cast
Laura Condlin (Margaret Page), Tom McCamus (George Page), Lucy Peacock (Alice Ford), Tom Rooney (Frank Ford), Steve Ross (John Falstaff), Nigel Bennett (Doctor Caius), Andrew Gillies (Hugh Evans), Janet Wright (Mistress Quickly), James Blendick (Robert Shallow), Dan Chameroy (Pistol), Victor Dolhai (Simple), Randy Hughson (Host), Trent Pardy (Fenton), Christopher Prentice (Slender), Andrea Runge (Anne Page), Timothy D. Stickney (Nim).
Analysis
Director Frank Galati's lushly mounted The Merry Wives of Windsor on the main stage of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival features a late-season understudy in a crucial role. Steve Ross assumes the daunting role of the pompous foil Falstaff for Geraint Wyn Davies, and although smaller in physical stature, he lends the fat Knight an easy baritone eloquence and a corpulent huffing and puffing that works admirably well. Galati, after an introduction by Slender in which the audience is encouraged to follow the Festival on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the official website, begins the production in an elegantly appointed Windsor parlor. A tall grandfather's clock and sitting chairs with lamps flank a deep set with bookcases, glass china cabinets, and a circular wooden wet bar upstage. Galati deftly employs four small platforms at the sides of the stage for vignettes and intimate scenes to hasten the pace of the play and ease the burden of tangled plot threads and an abundance of small-town characters.
Bartenders and waitresses change the set between scenes, an elegant chandelier lowering from the fly to denote the opulent Ford home and a lighted antler chandelier dropping for Falstaff's tavern abode. The setting feels eighteenth-century Puritan with Amish-like pilgrims in black and white and a maiden crossing downstage with a basket of apples and a shot game bird. Ross's burly Falstaff, wearing a red jacket over a white vest and breeches, licks his fingers and flings a napkin, an erudite blowhard with furry red muttonchops. His colorful but not-so-faithful followers - Bardolph in blue, sporting a wild afro; Nim a red-jacketed soldier; Pistol in an elaborately buttoned green uniform like a dissipated hotel doorman - bolt him 1.1, and in 1.2 he shows off his identical love letters and his chestful of ribbons and medals, bragging of his intended bedding of the titular wives - "I will trade to them both" - with a bawdy thrusting of his hips.
Ross's Falstaff quickly becomes the butt of repeated jokes at the hands of the quaint townspeople - in 2.2 he squats atop the head of a stuffed bear, his feet on the brown carpeting for a booming soliloquy - and the 3.3 deception and prank, the first of three, is Galati's best scene of the production. With the wives swilling wine at a wooden table upstage (ominously near a sizeable laundry basket), Ross's Falstaff enters from one of the platforms with a flower in his hand. He drops slowly and arthritically to one knee to pitch a bit of woo, then must lean on the table for leverage as he struggles to regain his feet. Mrs. Page continually misses her agreed-upon cue to enter, causing Mrs. Ford to lapse into nervous giggles, and the latter tries to cover Falstaff's considerable bottom with a pair of breeches when he hides under the table at the imminent return of her jealous husband. When the wives decide to conceal him - "look: there's a basket!" - he tango dances Mrs. Ford to the basket - "how do I love thee?" - and they dump soiled laundry atop him. With Ford rampaging in a search all around the stage, two servants attempt to lift the basket, which does not budge, one jerking wildly and the other sprawling to the stage to spontaneous audience applause. Intermission follows Ford's absurd summary - "I could not find him" - and his command of "come, wife" goes unheeded as Mrs. Ford stomps offstage in the opposite direction.
With Ross's Falstaff mostly a buffoonish target, Tom Rooney's stone-faced but blustering Ford provides the production with most of its comedy. In 2.1, he blusters in a tuxedo and top hat and in 2.2 he appears in disguise as Brook wearing a green coat and a soup-bowl cut orange wig. He begins the second half 3.4, standing upstage like a military sentry with a rifle, taking a shot at a flying bird, then muttering as he stalks offstage to the taunting cries from the unwounded target. While Falstaff, suffering from a head cold and soaking his fat feet in steaming water, complains 3.5 about being dumped in the Thames - "I have a kind of alacrity in sinking" - Ford as Brook offers sympathy but steps behind the Knight to launch a big fake roundhouse punch at the back of Falstaff's furry head. Once alone, Rooney's Ford soliloquizes, splashing his face with the foot water, and he gags and spits some out before getting his entire hand stuck, in his fury, within a brandy snifter. In the somewhat déjà vu 4.2, after Falstaff steadily feeds himself from a plate held by Mrs. Ford, then takes the plate with him when agrees to be disguised, Rooney's Ford roars at his servants - "put down the basket!" - then kicks it repeatedly, even when restrained, then licks his lips before frantically searching within it. Soiled laundry flies, Ford's search encumbered by the brandy snifter - "my jealousy is reasonable!" - and when he fails to discover Falstaff, everyone onstage leans over slowly to peer within the emptied basket. As the insulted wives refill the basket, Rooney's Ford is let in on the joke, and he angrily shreds the Knight's love letters but then repents, not just kneeling before Mrs. Ford - "pardon me, wife" - but falling prone, face down, his arms splayed.
Galati directs a slew of detailed supporting performances that enhance the Ford and Falstaff antics. Shallow is a cane-wielding patriarch with a booming voice and an admiration for Anne Page - "she has...good gifts" - and Hugh Evans is a prickly Parson - "upon familiarity will grow more contempt" - tossing a money bag to a servant during 1.2 and offering droll commentary on Falstaff, disguised in drag as a fortune teller 4.1: "I like not when a woman has a great beard." The suave Page provides a thoughtful contrast to the red-faced vehemence of Ford, amiably tossing an apple to a servant in 1.1 before enduring an over-enthusiastic handshake from Slender, then issuing clipped commands to everyone in 3.4 when confronted with his daughter's feelings for Fenton. Slender is a foppish and inept scarecrow, spinning around frantically in 1.1 then spit-shining his shoes and checking the gel in his hair 3.4. And Caius is a too far over-the-top physician with an impenetrable French accent - "I shall make the t'ird!" - wearing a purple coat with gloves, top hat, cane, and a violently violet bow tie. He uses a snuff box and strikes absurd poses before discovering the hiding Slender in 1.4 - stuffed in a cabinet beneath the book case - and he abandons the 2.3 duel with Parson Hugh by leaving his sword swaying from its point stuck within the stage: "let me speak a word with your ear."
Galati concludes his expertly paced comedy with the final 5.5 humiliation of Falstaff. Amid sound effects of a hooting owl and a tolling bell, Ross's frightened Falstaff - wearing a deer-hair vest and a pointy antlers-helmet - grabs the heads of both wives - "each a haunch" - before the moonshine revelers pinch and taunt him, then encircle and kick him mercilessly. The merry wives lead the assault, most notably Mrs. Ford, who in 1.1 had pinched her own cheeks for some color but is now in total control. Rooney's Ford, as splashes of orange, yellow, red, and blue light play across the paper globes that dangle from the fly, brings a universally happy ending by revealing to Falstaff his alter ego Brook: "for he tonight shall lie with Mrs. Ford."