`WIVES' TALE MAKES MERRY.

Byline: Reed Johnson Theater Critic

Physical grace is often funniest in big men.

Take actor Alan Blumenfeld, impersonating the Goodyear blimp in pantaloons (with help from a couple of pillows) in Theatricum Botanicum's buoyant new production of ``The Merry Wives of Windsor.''

When Blumenfeld's sumo-shaped Sir John Falstaff greets a social superior, he doesn't simply bow and scrape in the usual sycophantic manner. He capers and slides like a pudgy gazelle, pirouetting 360 degrees before coming to a temporary halt.

Later, when the randy old knight goes to woo Mistress Ford (Melora Marshall), Blumenfeld launches himself onto a divan like a heat-seeking missile, practically taking half the stage with him.

When Falstaff's machinations finally begin to unravel, unleashing the wrath of the aggrieved Master Ford (Tom Allard), Blumenfeld flops on his back and flails like an upended horseshoe crab trying to right itself. It's as if the laws of moral gravity, which Shakespeare's beloved rogue has flouted for so long, finally have brought him crashing down to earth.

Blumenfeld's floridly rhetorical, comically mincing performance personifies the best of Ellen Geer's production, which manages to stay light on its feet even when it's threatening to go over the top. Geer isn't above slipping a whoopee cushion under one of the Bard's less-ingenious plots, or making light of characters who should be taken seriously only if your aim is putting an audience to sleep.

The production skillfully delineates all of the play's ``Comedy of Humours'' archetypes, but stops short of reducing them to cartoons. So we get Justin Doran playing the gangly, dorky Slender - in blue suede shoes, no less - as a cross between Ichabod Crane and Jar Jar Binks. We get Kelly Vincent's bug-eyed Pistol; and Jim LeFave, dribbling spittle and incomprehensible French-accented threats, as Dr. Caius, one of those classic, vulgar continentals who pop up in Tudor comedies and Monty Python sketches.

Allard's Ford hits exactly the right note between foolishness and slyness, while Leonard Kelly-Young's low-key Master Page helps keep the production emotionally grounded.

And if Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (Susan Angelo) are enjoyable but somewhat indistinguishable, that only goes to reinforce one of the play's reverberant themes: that individual aggrandizement rates below collective harmony. At Theatricum Botanicum, they're humming that tune right on key.

THE FACTS

What: ``The Merry Wives of Windsor.''

Where: Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.

When: In repertory through Sept. 19.

Tickets: $17/$12 upper tier; $12/$10 seniors, students and Equity members; all seats $6 for children 6-12; children 5 and under free. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three stars.

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Photo

Photo: Sir Falstaff (Alan Blumenfeld), flanked by Mistress Page (Susan Angelo, left) and Mistress Ford (Melora Marshall), pays for his machinations in ``The Merry Wives of Windsor.''