STATES OF FLUX

Kavanaugh's sparkling production was set in England just after the end of the Second World War. This was a period of considerable social change, echoing the uncertainties of Elizabeth I's later reign when the play was written.

WINDSOR COMMUTERS

Dress, speech and even what people drank were used to signal class distinctions. “Falstaff and his companions look as though they’ve just been demobbed… Page and Ford are bowler-hatted commuters on the Windsor line; their wives got up in tight little jackets and flared skirts” Patrick Carnegy, The Spectator, 7 December 2002.

DOUBLE-BILL

The production opened at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 31 October 2002, an appropriate date since Falstaff's final humiliation at Herne's Oak was set during Halloween. Paired with Kavanaugh's production of Coriolanus, in 2003 the show toured the regions before transferring to the Old Vic, London.

KNIGHT LIFE

Richard Cordery was "a superbly mountainous Falstaff...tramping the stage...stuffed with language as his body is packed with fat" Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 2 November 2002. The production also had real pyschological depth exemplified by Tom Mannion's Frank Ford "judging the comedy of his paranoia with pinpoint precision" Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, November 2002.