Who cares if this late-sixteenth-century love farce isn’t the Bard’s finest or most original play when you can simply enjoy pure, unadulterated fun on a pleasant evening at the Globe? Climbing the tower with cushions and a bag of blankets and scarves just in case, I felt as if I was heading to a picnic with mates who I knew would make me laugh out loud, seizing every chance for somewhat bawdy humour.

Because the absolute best thing about this production is that it stays quite true to the original and has not been scrubbed clean nor sanitised in the name of political correctness. Call me a bigot, but I enjoyed: the good dose of fat-shaming (Falstaff: You may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down.); the explicit sexual innuendos (Mistress Ford saying she could be ‘knighted’ by Sir John); and even the strong dash of xenophobia towards the Welsh and French (Doctor Caius whose Franglais converts By God to By Gar to Bugger).

When there were departures from the original, they did work well, for example the way that Falstaff is portrayed. Into the celadon, yellow, and teal stage design and costumes of the Windsorites struts rotund George Fouracres as the knight. This visible outsider, dressed in scarlet, foreshadows the wound he aims to inflict on the townsfolk, only for it to backfire spectacularly. Despite his leering, excessive alcohol consumption, and bad intentions, there’s something charismatic about him, giving credibility to the script amendment whereby Mistress Ford seems to develop a genuine interest for Sir John. Whether her interest is purely sexual or something deeper remains unclear, but this attachment elicits more empathy from the audience for the increasingly bedraggled Falstaff than Shakespeare might have intended.

But this slight twist on the original also adds depth to the relationship between the titular characters. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are clearly the original Elizabethan Besties, forever visiting one another, scheming together, bemoaning their husbands, and giggling in corners. This relationship is strained when Mistress Page notices the affection Mistress Ford develops for the knight, but it does not cause a rift. They continue to present a united front, supporting and covering for each other. I really appreciated this portrayal of female friendship.

The other big shout out goes to Adam Wadsworth whose seemingly effortless switching between Doctor Caius and Slender was nothing short of incredible. His brilliant play with French for the former (I married a garcon!) and the superb physical comedy in his portrayal of the latter earn him “Actor of the Play.”