Woman to Play Falstaff in Washington ‘Merry Wives’

A woman is breaking new ground in Shakespearean interpretation by playing the role of the heavy-drinking, womanizing Sir John Falstaff.

The Washington Shakespeare Theater at the Folger has chosen television and stage comedienne Pat Carroll to head its cast of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” which starts in early May.

Shakespeare was originally produced with boys playing the women’s roles but the company says its research has turned up no other instance of a woman’s playing Falstaff. “It’s not happened before as far as we know,” says Folger artistic director Michael Kahn.

Carroll, star of television shows like “The Sid Caesar Hour” and “Danny Thomas Show” and the voice of the squid witch in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”, first tried Shakespeare at the age of 60 when she played the role of the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” at the Folger.

She was such a hit with the audience that Kahn asked her what other Shakespearean role she would like to try.

Remembering that “The Merry Wives of Windsor” was the first Shakespeare play she had ever seen and how impressed she was by the high-living Falstaff, she suggested timidly that she would like to play Falstaff.

Kahn, a Broadway director with an eye for the theatrically experimental, thought she was joking at first but some time later called her back to ask her to take a beard test.

Carroll recalls with a booming laugh that the beard was not a success. “I looked like the bearded lady at the circus,” she says. They decided to settle for a mop of gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a curling mustache and fluffy sideburns.

Carroll says the only drawback to the role is the half-hour makeup session each night.