SOURCE: Shurgot, Michael W. “2001 Ashland Season.” Upstart Crow 21 (2001): 93-4.

In the following review, Shurgot discusses Lillian Groag's 2001 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, remarking that the production was a “three-hour marathon of sight gags, pratfalls, and petty stuff.”

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2001 season was unusual in that the four Shakespeare plays presented were all types of “comedy”: The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, and the rarely seen Troilus and Cressida were staged in the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre. Shakespeare's final “comedy of forgiveness,”¹ The Tempest, was staged in the indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre. The productions were as different as the plays themselves, offering spectators a broad sampling of Shakespeare's, and the Festival's, comic artistry.

Lillian Groag's production of Merry Wives became a three-hour marathon of sight gags, pratfalls, and petty stuff. The set and costumes were overly Elizabethan; several characters, especially Shallow...