SOURCE: Bemrose, John. “Darkness and Light.” Maclean's 108, no. 25 (19 June 1995): 60.

In the excerpted review below, Bemrose assesses the Stratford Festival production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Richard Monette and Antoni Cimolino and starring William Hutt as Falstaff. Bemrose finds that too much of the comic subtlety in the play was overstated.

The opening playbill also includes Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Richard Monette and Antoni Cimolino, and starring William Hutt as Falstaff—in the first of three major roles he is undertaking this season. The directors have set this tale of seduction and revenge in the Victorian period—while making Hutt's Falstaff, with his rakishly set top hat and red waistcoat, seem like a holdover from the earlier, more libertine days of the Georgians. This allows the great-bellied buffoon to appear as even more of an outsider than he usually does, and...