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Article: Silly-as-a-sitcom `Merry Wives' bogs down.(Arts & Literature)
- Article from:
- The Register Guard (Eugene, OR)
- Article date:
- June 22, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 The Register Guard. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard
William Shakespeare's `The Merry Wives of Windsor' is a 2 1/2 -hour `I Love Lucy' sitcom. The men are buffoons, the women show them up as fools, and love triumphs in the end. It's all done with humanity, wit and style.
Getting from Act I Scene I to the point where all is ending well, though, can be trickier than that, as became clear on Friday night when the Oregon Shakespeare Festival opened its outdoor summer season with a production of `Merry Wives' by guest director Andrew Tsao.
Despite a handful of delicious moments amid generally workmanlike acting, the show sagged from sloppy timing, lack of sparkle ...