Whose Nostalgia? Geoffrey Rush and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Brisbane 1987

Abstract

In performance, any play by Shakespeare can evoke a dizzying array of emotions: the emotions the playwright describes or evokes in the text; those the director chooses to emphasize in production; the emotions the performers believe they enact; and the emotions experienced or read by individual members of the audience. Consequently it is difficult to discuss the plethora of emotions generated at any performance of any production of any Shakespeare play. However, it is clear that a feeling of nostalgia was in circulation for many when Geoffrey Rush directed The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1987, relocating Shakespeare’s Berkshire to the Brisbane suburb of Windsor, c.1947 (see Figure 22.1), even though Rush himself was consciously trying to avoid the ‘rosy glow’ of nostalgia.1