Tim Hochstrasser 
If this performance did not clear all of the hurdles set by Shakespeare and the play’s daunting production history, it cannot be faulted on ambition and daring. The company has fully earned the right to be heard and seen again in this concept of the play and one hopes that it will be in a larger, more suitable venue.
Not everything in Grimeborn can work and while the commitment of all concerned deserves recognition, this adaptation cannot be considered wholly successful. As a better test of its worth though, I do hope further performances can be arranged with a full ensemble of strings, woodwind and brass. If all the main lines are present, the core of this delicate work can still generate the right kind of silvery shimmer.
After Monty Python and Blackadder it is not really possible to present this type of opera in full cross-gartered fustian without an ironic angle; so much better in many ways, therefore, to take it out of time and re-present it in another period altogether, or in contemporary dress – as here – where in effect it becomes The Merry Chavs of Windsor. The result is one of the best vindications of the Grimeborn ethos in the current season and a wonderful refutation of the Coward quote at the head of this review.
There is an open-minded integrity about these conversations and characterisations that is highly impressive and which deserves a wider audience in a larger (but not too much larger) performance space
The evening as a whole provided a superbly invigorating beginning to the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola. We were given new insights into an old work that made it seem much less forbidding and more accessible than usual; and in the second half the joyous, madcap side to the life of the clown and the circus was given full rein in a new one. Tradition and its subversion, the two governing tenets of Grimeborn, were in in this instance in perfect balance.
So in sum, the production did achieve exactly what Grimeborn sets out to do each year. It knocked old layers of varnish off an old favourite and found a new and convincingly thought-through scenario in which to relocate it. Director Lewis Reynolds has a lot of experience in presenting opera at the King’s Head Theatre, which made him a very good choice to achieve fine results here. This was a truly committed, full-on team effort: and in this opera nothing else will deliver the goods.
So while this is a challenging night in the theatre in the best sense, it remains incomplete and unfinished and invites further revision and reflection on the part of the very able performers and highly thoughtful creators.
The evening was notable for reviving a work of genuine tuneful elegance and comic potential. The commitment and skill of the production overall makes you want to see the same company offer a fully staged run in a larger venue – and soon.
