This year I had enough forethought to plan ahead and organize a group ticket purchase. We were early enough to take advantage of American Player's Theater's "Bellyful of Laughs" package, which provided us with tickets and a picnic for a very reasonable price.
We started out the evening with a fabulous picnic, courtesy of the Hubbard Avenue Diner in Middleton. The main feature of the meal were cold Italian marinated salmon filets and and assortment of delectable salads: chicken salad with grapes and walnuts, Mediterranean pasta salad with artichoke hearts, confetti bean salad, and a refreshing fruit salad. A highlight of the meal, for me, was the fresh baked baguette with a wheel of brie and pesto aioli. Dessert was amazingly rich chocolate brownies. In addition to all of that bounty, one of the ladies brought along a fresh green salad, and fluffy yellow cake. Topping it all off were several bottles of good wine. It was a total foodgasm.
After the meal, we made our way up the hill in high spirits, and settled in to our seats to watch The Merry Wives of Windsor, as directed by John Neville-Andrews.
Colleen Madden (Ford) and Kathleen Pirkl Tague (Page) played the Merry Wives of the title. They were good-naturedly wicked as they intrigued against the lecherous old Sir John Falstaff (Jason O'Connell) and sent Master Ford (Jim DeVita) into a tizzy of jealousy.
O'Connell was wonderfully disgusting as the fat, lascivious knight. Every word he uttered was dripping with earthy and lewd suggestiveness. He made good use of the girth provided by the traditional fat-suit, and even his laugh (a leering sort of chuckle) tended to bring a responding giggle from the audience.
However, it was DeVita's Ford that stole the show. From his ridiculous pirate get-up for his disguise as Brook, to his failing, shrieking temper tantrum in his own home, he completely upstaged Falstaff. The longest laugh in the show came when Dr. Cauis (Scott Haden, delightfully understudying an absent Mark Corkins) and Master Page (David Daniel) had shut the raging Ford into the infamous buck-basket and were sitting upon it to hold it closed. The audience was already in tears of mirth from the wild carryins-on of DeVita, and the actors paused to let the laughter die down. It took a while to subside, and the pause grew quite long, which in turn caused the laughter to rise again several times before the scene could finally continue. I didn't check my watch, but the show seemed to have stopped for at least a full minute, possibly more.
James Ridge, portraying the language-mangling, Welsh Parson Evans also made me smile, particularly during the "fairy revel". The spry little clergyman hopping about in furry Pan-legs gave me echoes of Ridge's turn as Puck in the summer of 2000.
Sarah Day, who by now has played Anne Page and both of the Wives in her 20 years with APT, shows her brilliant comic chops as the distractible though good-hearted Mistress Quickly.
I heartily recommend this production to any and all in need of a good belly laugh. The play runs until October 2nd, when it will be the last performance of the APT season.
