The old rogue Sir John Falstaff has returned penniless from the war and plans to seduce two ‘merry wives’. Shakespeare’s hilarious comedy is his nearest approach to a farce, with people forever rushing in and out of doors, including a comic Welsh parson, a manic French doctor and a madly jealous husband. Depicting middle-class family life in an English provincial town, our production is set in 1947, a time of austerity and optimism, when women are finding a new role in post-war Britain and our musicians at the Garter Inn are playing 40’s jazz.