Sitcom
Shakespeare
Shakespeare Festival/LA is out to prove that the Bard's classic 'Merry Wives' comedy was an 'I Love Lucy' template
By Jeff Favre, entertainment columnist
July 3, 2003
Pop culture historians consider "I Love Lucy" the forerunner to modern TV situation comedies. But director Ben Donenberg believes the first sitcom came earlier -- about 350 years earlier. While directing an all-star reading of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Donenberg, the founder and artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/LA, came to a startling conclusion.
"Wayne Knight from 'Seinfeld' was playing Falstaff and Tracey Ullman and Rita Wilson were the wives when I realized that this was the archetype for 'I Love Lucy,' " Donenberg said last week during a rehearsal break. The Shakespeare Festival/LA season begins July 9 at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. Its production of "Merry Wives" moves July 31 to South Coast Botanic Garden in Rolling Hills Estates.
"I started researching the text, because it's full of references that were well known in Elizabethan times that don't play today," said Donenberg. "As I was translating these old jokes into contemporary ones so I could better understand them, I became more convinced that the writers of 'I Love Lucy' had to be aware of this play."
The notion isn't that farfetched.
In "Merry Wives," Sir John Falstaff writes seductive letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in an attempt to get at their husbands' money. But Falstaff is unaware that the ladies are on to him and are plotting to make him look foolish.
Meanwhile, Ford's husband, who is unaware that his wife is not really falling in love with Falstaff, becomes jealous and paranoid.
Donenberg realized that if you replaced Falstaff, Page and Ford with an assortment of characters from "I Love Lucy," the plot bore remarkable similarities to the famed TV show. The director knew he was onto something when he found a photo of "Lucy" stars Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance holding letters, just as the wives do in Shakespeare's play. So he decided to stage "Merry Wives" as a 1950s sitcom. Donenberg even wrote to Lucie Arnaz, Ball's daughter, and received permission to use the image he had found for the play's promotional materials.
"Our entire set is black and white and looks like it's right out of 'I Love Lucy,' " Donenberg said. "A lot of our transition music will be theme songs from those original shows."
The look and feel of the play will be "I Love Lucy," but Donenberg made one switch: Instead of Ford being a nightclub owner like Ricky, he is a magician.
"The word merry, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means 'a piece of fooling,' or, in other words, a practical joke," Donenberg said. "One of the best ways of fooling someone is through illusion. So I started looking at classic illusions that would underscore key parts of the story.
"For example, with Anne Page (Mistress Page's daughter), her mother wants her to marry one man, her dad wants her to marry another man and she wants a third man. So we are using the illusion of sawing a woman in half.
"When Ford has a vision about his wife with Falstaff, we are using the substitution trunk illusion, where Ford gets locked in the trunk, and seconds later he is out of the trunk."
Donenberg enlisted the assistance of Mark Wilson, who starred in "Magic Land of Allakazam" when the first network TV magic series debuted in 1960.
Wilson taught the illusions to Geoffrey Lower, who plays Ford.
This is the third Shakespeare Festival/LA production for Lower, who is best known for his role as the Rev. Timothy Johnson on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." For the first time in nearly 20 years, Lower is appearing with his longtime friend and Juilliard School classmate Irwin Appel, who plays Falstaff.
"We lived together in this little place for two years," Lower said. "My bedroom was the dining room and he lived in a closet."
"And we had the most fun," said Appel, who has taught dramatics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for the past four years. "We shared a love of margaritas and Mexican food. We acted at school. But I feel like we've done more acting in these rehearsals than we ever did."
The actors hadn't seen each other since Lower's wedding 16 years ago. But each man knew Donenberg, who also attended Juilliard.
"I thought it would be fun to put them together again," Donenberg said. "And I was right. But this entire production has been the most fun I've ever had with Shakespeare. I told the cast, 'I'm not the director. I'm the coach. You guys have fun and I'll chime in when I have something to say.'
"I've been doing Shakespeare 18 years, but I've never done 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' I never liked this play until (the all-star) reading, when I realized what it was. Now anybody who comes will see how early situation comedies grew out of the characters in this play."
Shakespeare Festival/LA is out to prove that the Bard's classic 'Merry Wives' comedy was an 'I Love Lucy' template
By Jeff Favre, entertainment columnist
July 3, 2003
Pop culture historians consider "I Love Lucy" the forerunner to modern TV situation comedies. But director Ben Donenberg believes the first sitcom came earlier -- about 350 years earlier. While directing an all-star reading of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Donenberg, the founder and artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/LA, came to a startling conclusion.
"Wayne Knight from 'Seinfeld' was playing Falstaff and Tracey Ullman and Rita Wilson were the wives when I realized that this was the archetype for 'I Love Lucy,' " Donenberg said last week during a rehearsal break. The Shakespeare Festival/LA season begins July 9 at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. Its production of "Merry Wives" moves July 31 to South Coast Botanic Garden in Rolling Hills Estates.
"I started researching the text, because it's full of references that were well known in Elizabethan times that don't play today," said Donenberg. "As I was translating these old jokes into contemporary ones so I could better understand them, I became more convinced that the writers of 'I Love Lucy' had to be aware of this play."
The notion isn't that farfetched.
In "Merry Wives," Sir John Falstaff writes seductive letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in an attempt to get at their husbands' money. But Falstaff is unaware that the ladies are on to him and are plotting to make him look foolish.
Meanwhile, Ford's husband, who is unaware that his wife is not really falling in love with Falstaff, becomes jealous and paranoid.
Donenberg realized that if you replaced Falstaff, Page and Ford with an assortment of characters from "I Love Lucy," the plot bore remarkable similarities to the famed TV show. The director knew he was onto something when he found a photo of "Lucy" stars Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance holding letters, just as the wives do in Shakespeare's play. So he decided to stage "Merry Wives" as a 1950s sitcom. Donenberg even wrote to Lucie Arnaz, Ball's daughter, and received permission to use the image he had found for the play's promotional materials.
"Our entire set is black and white and looks like it's right out of 'I Love Lucy,' " Donenberg said. "A lot of our transition music will be theme songs from those original shows."
The look and feel of the play will be "I Love Lucy," but Donenberg made one switch: Instead of Ford being a nightclub owner like Ricky, he is a magician.
"The word merry, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means 'a piece of fooling,' or, in other words, a practical joke," Donenberg said. "One of the best ways of fooling someone is through illusion. So I started looking at classic illusions that would underscore key parts of the story.
"For example, with Anne Page (Mistress Page's daughter), her mother wants her to marry one man, her dad wants her to marry another man and she wants a third man. So we are using the illusion of sawing a woman in half.
"When Ford has a vision about his wife with Falstaff, we are using the substitution trunk illusion, where Ford gets locked in the trunk, and seconds later he is out of the trunk."
Donenberg enlisted the assistance of Mark Wilson, who starred in "Magic Land of Allakazam" when the first network TV magic series debuted in 1960.
Wilson taught the illusions to Geoffrey Lower, who plays Ford.
This is the third Shakespeare Festival/LA production for Lower, who is best known for his role as the Rev. Timothy Johnson on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." For the first time in nearly 20 years, Lower is appearing with his longtime friend and Juilliard School classmate Irwin Appel, who plays Falstaff.
"We lived together in this little place for two years," Lower said. "My bedroom was the dining room and he lived in a closet."
"And we had the most fun," said Appel, who has taught dramatics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for the past four years. "We shared a love of margaritas and Mexican food. We acted at school. But I feel like we've done more acting in these rehearsals than we ever did."
The actors hadn't seen each other since Lower's wedding 16 years ago. But each man knew Donenberg, who also attended Juilliard.
"I thought it would be fun to put them together again," Donenberg said. "And I was right. But this entire production has been the most fun I've ever had with Shakespeare. I told the cast, 'I'm not the director. I'm the coach. You guys have fun and I'll chime in when I have something to say.'
"I've been doing Shakespeare 18 years, but I've never done 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' I never liked this play until (the all-star) reading, when I realized what it was. Now anybody who comes will see how early situation comedies grew out of the characters in this play."