Indulgence and seduction

It is difficult to upstage the wine-glugging, woman-groping, purse-stealing, downright Dionysiac antics of Sir John Falstaff, yet Greg Hicks's Dr Caius does just that. Walking with the self-consciousness of a peacock with the best tail in town, his prissy demeanour and Inspector Clouseau-worthy French accent transform his lowly role as one of three suitors to Anne Page into the production's glittering highlight.

This is not to dismiss Richard Cordery's shamelessly corpulent embodiment of the formerly subversive companion to Prince Hal. With a height to match Falstaff 's considerable girth, his expression can change effortlessly from the mournful look of a troubled bulldog to that of a misguidedly worldly-wise satyr - confident that he will see the bottoms of as many women as he will of wine-bottles.

Rachel Kavanaugh's post Second-World-War production takes the audience back to a time when Englishmen were reasserting the fact that their homes were their castles, and their wives - needless to say - were their devoted consorts. The two men whose wives Falstaff tries to seduce - George Page (Simon Coates) and Frank Ford (Tom Mannion) - look like slim versions of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their matching bowler hats, gentleman's umbrellas, contrasting pinstripe suits, and straight-as-a-cocktail-stick personalities:

No wonder Falstaff thinks their wives might be looking for a little fun.

The production takes time to warm up, and the set's bright red floor and minimal decoration seem oddly unimaginative and sterile for this fertile comedy. However, Lucy Tregear as Meg Page, and Claire Carrie as Alice Ford both wake up the proceedings by endowing their glintingeyed characters with steely cats' claws: as the play's title suggests, these wives prevail by realising that practical jokes and cutting humour are the best weapons for dealing with a man who, himself, subverts society through laughter.

This is Shakespeare at his most comedically schematic, so it is inevitable that the subsidiary plot, where young Anne Page is courted by three contrasting suitors, should pall somewhat next to Falstaff 's colourful attempted adultery. However, Hicks transforms his bit-part into a star role, while Adam Kay is entertainingly vapid, and Chuk Iwuji emerges as a gloriously dashing example of man amongst the fops and fornicators.

Alison Fishe's charming Mistress Quickly, completes a gallery of rogues that represents society at its most enjoyably reprobate. Pleasant Christmas fare for those escaping relentlessly happy families.