Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It begins with cacophony as a braying mob of boozers rampages across the stage, the sort of folk you’d move away from in a train carriage, not spend the evening with in a theatre. Whenever the pace flags in Blanche McIntyre’s production, generally someone will start shrieking or capering, but the initially yobbery quickly subsides. We find ourselves, courtesy of Robert Innes Hopkin’s terrific set, outside a quaint house, soon to be invaded by Sir John Falstaff, relocated from Eastcheap and Henry IV Part Two to grassy suburbia.The inveterate cheat, gambler and liar (John Hodgkinson) has targeted two wives of wealthy men for a romance scam, but Mistress Page and Mistress Ford figure it out and decide to bamboozle him back. Mistress Page’s comely daughter Anne (Tara Tijani) has three suitors and mother must also manoeuvre the right one into place, though Anne loves neither her mother’s nor her father’s choice. Falstaff’s rambunctious entourage and various disgruntled townsfolk are milling about, including grumpy Justice Shallow and his simpering nephew Slender (Patrick Walshe McBride using his lanky height and mobile features to great comic effect).Falstaff is utterly deplorable yet strangely loveable, but Hodgkinson doesn’t quite get across the loveable aspect. This may not be his fault but a problem about translating the status of a knight to a contemporary setting. In place of doublet and hose he wears a three-piece suit and affects a lofty manner. When he addresses rowdy Bardolph, Nym and Pistol in a pub garden, it is not clear why he hangs out with these young people. Despite the modern dress, the lovingly detailed set, the bicycle and glimpse of a smartphone, we never forget that these are characters from the 1600s.Even after 400 years, jokes about Welshmen and funny foreigners never fail to land. Ian Hughes is endearing as the timid parson Sir Hugh Evans and Jason Thorpe a downright hilarious Dr Caius, a French dentist (for no reason other than to include some silly business with a dentist’s chair). The stage manager and her invisible elves work tirelessly to whizz props on to the substage platform as sofas, pub tables and beds erupt from below.Richard Goulding’s intense and melancholic Ford, constantly suspecting his wife of infidelity, is a small-town Othello with an internalised Iago. But he’s ridiculous, not murderous, sending bras, shirts and knickers flying as he searches for the fat knight in a laundry hamper. Riess Fennell and David Partridge make adorably bemused laundrymen. Fight director Philip d’Orléans creates a whirlwind scrap involving household items and most of the cast.It’s the merry wives’ show, not Falstaff’s, with Shakespeare’s most delicious depiction of female friendship and solidarity. Samantha Spiro as Mistress Page is the agile schemer, Siubhan Harrison the seductive Mistress Ford, and Shazia Nicholls’ vivacious Mistress Quickly is on hand to stir the plot. In Windsor forest, Falstaff’s final sigh, “I am dejected”, cuts through the antics to a place of true feeling.★★★☆☆To September 7, rsc.org.uk
