The Merry Wives of Windsor Ave

Actress and playwright Geraldine Brophy’s new play The Merry Wives of Windsor Ave will have its world premiere in Hamilton next month.

Waikato University theatre studies student Liz Buick, who also works full time at the university as a student recruitment adviser, is directing the play being staged by Hamilton Playbox Repertory Society at Riverlea Theatre.

“I was driving along one day and listening to Concert FM when I heard Geraldine Brophy being interviewed and talking about her play that had been originally commissioned by Downstage, but not performed. I contacted Geraldine’s agent to see if I could have the rights to the play.”

It took a month or so, but the answer was positive. The cast of 10 began rehearsing in February for the show that opens on April 10 and will run for two weeks. It’s the fifth play that Buick’s directed.

“It’s a farce,” says Buick, “so it’s very funny but it has some very touching human moments.”

She says it’s been a challenge to direct because the text moves in and out of modern and Shakespearian sequences. “And the Shakespeare has got to be bad because the play is about a bunch of people in the American Embassy putting on the play, The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

Buick met Brophy when she was in Hamilton to appear in Grumpy Old Women. “It was great to be able to get her ideas about the play and discuss mine. She’s put a modern twist on an old play and shows that while the language may have changed over the last few hundred years, office politics and romance and human emotion has changed little.”