Not your father's 'Wives'

Actor-turned-director Ivers sees timeless message in Shakespeare comedy

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Terry Shapiro

Randy Moore portrays Shallow, left, Philip Pleasants is Sir Hugh Evans and Jeffrey Evan Thomas plays Slender in the Denver Center Theatre Company production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is set in the Roaring '20s.

Call it the seven-year itch.

In his seventh season with the Denver Center Theatre Company, actor David Ivers makes his DCTC directorial debut today with William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It's not your father's Merry Wives, though. (Maybe your grandfather's.) In this version, Elizabethan England meets the Roaring '20s.

The plot concerns two middle-aged wives who use the comic knight Sir John Falstaff to make their husbands jealous.

"Falstaff, who we know from the Henry IV plays, is a very different character here," Ivers explained before a recent dress rehearsal. "The lore goes that Shakespeare wrote it at the request of (Queen Elizabeth I) because she wanted to see the character of Falstaff in love.

"These women teach their husbands a lovely and hilarious lesson about how independent and fun they really are."

As an actor, Ivers has appeared in many of Shakespeare's 36 plays, and he has staged others as a director. He has a particular fondness for Merry Wives.

"It's not the comedy that A Midsummer Night's Dream or As You Like It is. It doesn't have the darker overtones. . . . It's not about discovering love for the first time, it's about the reinvestment in what you already have."

If there is an "accessible" Shakespeare play, Ivers said Merry Wives qualifies.

"If ever there was a play he wrote that speaks in an easier way to a modern era it's this one," said Ivers, who has appeared in 20 DCTC productions. "Setting this play in the Elizabethan period kind of removes it. More than any of his other plays, it becomes a museum piece of tankards and Elizabethan dances. But there's something about the independence, the strength, the music possibilities of the period right after the women's right to vote . . . that seemed to me to speak to what these women are suggesting with their lives. Shakespeare always writes strong women."

Having directed plays for Oregon Stage Company, Portland Repertory Theatre and the Michigan Shakespeare Festival among others, Ivers felt ready to tackle a Denver Center production. It wasn't as simple as that, though.

"I went after it, I pursued it," he said. "I have to give thanks to (artistic director) Kent Thompson, because it's a really big act of faith in me. . . . I've been working as an actor with these people for several years, joking around in the dressing room. Now I have to establish credibility in a different way. It is tricky and fun and anxious at times."

The challenges are different for a director, Ivers said, but the joys can be comparable.

"I've always felt as an actor that the most thrilling part of the process of being in a play is rehearsal because it's the jazz of production, it's where you get people in a room and say, 'Let's play in C . . .' or ' . . . in G and see what happens.' Everyone's got a different instrument and you're trying to figure out what notes fit together in order to illuminate the play.

"The process as a director starts months and months before rehearsal. I get to exercise an entirely different part of my brain, the muscularity of my imagination. It's like jazz sessions not just with actors but with designers."

Shakespeare's work isn't just ageless, Ivers noted, but for all ages.

"Most major regional theaters and every college theater department does A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare still has a great marquee name. He sells tickets. I give people the benefit of the doubt of realizing the importance of his work long after they first experience it."

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

The Merry Wives of Windsor

* When and where: Today through April 19, The Stage Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets. Performances: 6:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7:30 p.m. Fridays and 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays

* Tickets: $38-$48

* Information: 303-893-4100