Almost 20 years ago the Royal Shakespeare Company produced a clever and funny production of Shakespeare's comedy that exposed the suburban values of the 1950s. Rachel Kavanaugh's new production moves the action to the period immediately after the war, and the result is an evening that may not delve very deeply, but is intelligent and undeniably fun. Welcome back to Shakespeare that is entertaining.
The Merry Wives was written at a time of great change, as Elizabeth's reign drew to a close. Postwar Britain was in a similar state of flux. In Bardolf, Nym and Pistol, Falstaff's recently demobbed and not-so-merry men, you see the beginnings of the dissatisfaction with the class system and the establishment that was to bring about the social upheavals of the next 20 years.
There are other neat ideas, too. Anne Page's successful suitor, Fenton, is a black American air force man, and class distinctions are delineated not just by how people speak and what they wear but even by what they drink.
Most successfully, the gossamer-thin and silly plot, in which Mistresses Page (Lucy Tregear) and Ford (Claire Carrie) take their revenge on Sir John Falstaff (Richard Cordery) for daring to write both of them the same love letter, is given ballast by the setting. Kavanaugh presents the wives as women readjusting to a world in which the independence they briefly enjoyed during the war is curtailed by the reappearance of husbands eager to re-establish the prewar order. The veneer of quiet suburban order wears thin as the women's rebellious streak shows itself, and they demonstrate that they like and rely on each other rather more than they do their husbands.
Apart from Greg Hicks's very funny turn as the French doctor, Dr Caius, and Alison Fiske as his money-grubbing housekeeper, Mistress Quickly, this is a cast almost entirely devoid of well-known names. It certainly doesn't need any stars: the acting is full-throated, generous and keen. This is one of those evenings when you come out of the theatre feeling as if you've been given a small, unexpected present.
· Until January 25. Box office: 0870 609 1110. Then touring.
