Falstaff in Spats

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 26

Falstaff in Spats

OSCAR ASCHE BRINGS SHAKESPEARE UP-TO-DATE; ANNE PAGE GOES PILLION-RIDING

Oscar Asche, the famous Australian actor, has answered in a decided affirmative the question of whether Shakespeare can be produced in a modern setting, with his production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” for the British Empire Shakespeare Society, says the “Daily Mail.” As Falstaff, Mr. Asche is a wliitespatted. top-hatted, beer drinker, who is baited anew in Mistress Page’s boudoir over the butcher’s shop in High Street, Windsor. Slender becomes a silly ass in plus fours, waggling a golf club. Parson Evans, armed with an umbrella, rides a push-bike. Fenton motor-cycles from Oxford and takes sweet Anne Page pillion-riding. Mistress Ford, who smokes cigarettes in a chain, telephones Mistress Quickly, who is a seedy charwoman, but is still full of the Shakespearian quicksilver of intrigue and duplicity. Mr. Asche even cleverly monkeyed with the text, presenting a slender greyhound which runs in the Wembley races.