Creative cast makes ‘Wives’ more the merrier
Lore has it that Queen Elizabeth became so enamored of Falstaff that she expressed a wish to see a comedy built entirely around him, and that Shakespeare complied by writing “The Merry Wives of Windsor.’’ Whether that account is true or not, the Falstaff of “Merry Wives’’ does stand as a purely comic figure, and the play itself has a tossed-off, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink qua…