An exuberant cast welcomes Shakespeare in the Park back to the Delacorte in Merry Wives (photo by Joan Marcus)

MERRY WIVES
Central Park, Delacorte Theater
Monday – Saturday through September 18, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

Shakespeare in the Park returns to the Delacorte after a canceled 2020 Covid summer season with the Public Theater’s exuberant but overbaked Merry Wives, continuing through September 18. Adapted by actress and playwright Jocelyn Bioh, who has appeared in such shows as An Octoroon and The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood and written such works as School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play and Nollywood Dreams, the play is thoroughly updated but often feels like a mash-up of such sitcoms as What’s Happening!! and The Jeffersons with such reality programs as The Bachelorette and Real Housewives.

The evening begins with Farai Malianga in a Brooklyn Nets Kyrie Irving jersey pounding on his djembe and eliciting an engaging call-and-response with the audience. It’s a wonderful start, reminiscent of how the late Baba Chuck Davis would kick off BAM’s annual DanceAfrica series. The seating is less thrilling but important, divided into sections full of vaccinated people who may choose not to mask — most don’t — and two emptier sections of unvaccinated people who must be masked and socially distanced.

Merry Wives is set in modern-day South Harlem, with a cast of characters from Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Senegal, portrayed exclusively by actors of color. In 2019, Kenny Leon directed a fabulous all-Black version of Much Ado About Nothing, but lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Madams Ford (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Page (Pascale Armand) join forces in contemporary update of Merry Wives (photo by Joan Marcus)

There’s a reason why The Merry Wives of Windsor is so rarely presented; it’s only been performed at the Delacorte twice before, in 1974 (with George Hearn, Marilyn Sokol, Barnard Hughes, Cynthia Harris, Michael Tucker, and Danny DeVito) and 1994 (with Margaret Whitton, David Alan Grier, Andrea Martin, Brian Murray, and Tonya Pinkins). It’s not one of the Bard’s better plays, a Medieval farce that tears down one of his most beloved creations, Sir John Falstaff, far too mean-spiritedly. And too many of the devices and subplots — mistaken identity, the exchange of letters, secret romance — feel like hastily written retreads here.

Falstaff (Jacob Ming-Trent) is a Biggie Smalls–loving wannabe playa out to conquer laundromat owner Madam Nkechi Ford (Susan Kelechi Watson) and socialite Madam Ekua Page (Pascale Armand), making cuckolds of their husbands, the distinguished Mister Nduka Ford (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and the generous Mister Kwame Page (Kyle Scatliffe).

“Nah man, I’m serious,” the sweats-wearing Falstaff tells Pistol (Joshua Echebiri), one of his minions. Madam Page “did so course over my exteriors with such a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass. She bears the purse too; she is from a region in Ghana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be sugar mamas to me; we’re gonna have the Ghanaian and the Nigerian jollof rice! Go bear this letter to Madam Page — and this one to Madam Ford. And then, my friend, I will thrive! . . . I mean . . . We will thrive.”

Misters Kwame Page (Kyle Scatliffe) and Nduka Ford (Gbenga Akinnagbe) try to avoid being cuckolded in Bard farce in Central Park (photo by Joan Marcus)

At the same time, the Pages’ daughter, Anne (Abena), is considered the most eligible bachelorette in Harlem and is being wooed by the well-established Doctor Caius (David Ryan Smith), the shy, nervous Slender (Echebiri), and Anne’s true love, Fenton (MaYaa Boateng), whom no one approves of. Manipulating various elements are the caring Pastor Evans (Phillip James Brannon) and the busybody Mama Quickly (Angela Grovey). Madams Ford and Page get wind of Falstaff’s deceit and team up to confound him, while a jealous Mister Ford disguises himself as a Rastaman named Brook to try to uncover Falstaff’s plan to bed his wife. “Please, off with him!” Sir John tells Brook about Ford. “I will stare him out of his wits, I will awe him with my club; I shall hang like Lebron James over the cuckold’s horns.” It all concludes with a series of matches that are as playful as they are convenient and contemporary.

Beowulf Boritt’s set is fabulous, consisting of the facades of a health clinic, a laundromat, and a hair braiding salon, which open up to reveal various interiors. Dede Ayite’s gorgeous costumes honor traditional African designs with bold colors and patterns. But director Saheem Ali (Fireflies, Fires in the Mirror), the Public’s associate artistic director who helmed audio productions of Romeo y Julieta, Richard II, and Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 during the pandemic lockdown, can’t get a grip on the story, instead getting lost in silly, repetitive slapstick that overwhelms the narrative. The laughs come inconsistently, settling for trivial humor over sustained comedy. This Merry Wives is a crowd pleaser the way familiar but routine sitcoms and reality shows are; light and frothy, none too demanding, but once they’re done, you’re on to the next program.