The Merry Wives of Windsor, Ludlow Castle, Ludlow

Clumsy, crass and no cause for merriment

The time, balmy June; the place, lovely Ludlow; the boy – ah, well, two out of three ain't bad, except when the third is Michael Bogdanov. Even before the show gets under way, this director can make you feel that it's a rainy night in Cleethorpes.

On this occasion, Bogdanov has covered a wall of Ludlow Castle with that immediate spirit-lightener, scaffolding. After we've had a chance to savour the happy memories this evokes, the cleaning staff come out to welcome us – but no, it is the cast. Some of the actors wear fishnet tops or T-shirts printed with a skull and crossbones; Mistresses Page and Ford are in assorted items from the church jumble sale, the latter in a skirt and jacket that she must have thought she could get away with in a dim light. They sing in praise of "Big John Falstaff, the yellowest you'll ever find".

It's nice that Philip Madoc's Falstaff has his own cheerleaders, because his performance isn't likely to raise huzzas from anyone else. When Mistress Quickly bounces on his knee, he seems to be wearily indulging the high sprits of the young, and as for being practically scared out of his skin when a furious husband is on the way, I've seen people look more worried when told the C11 bus was only going as far as Waitrose.

Some bits of comic business Bogdanov has introduced depend on physical pain – one character walks off knock-kneed after his balls are twisted; another, practising sword play, yelps and holds up his palm to show us a red stripe. The rest are, typically, merely coarse (Mistress Page empties a chamber pot over Falstaff) or so redundant as to amount to aids for the deaf (she mimes unbuttoning her waistcoat to accompany the line "You are undone").

Some of the additions make one muse about the atmosphere at rehearsals. What was the mood like, I wonder, when Bogdanov said that, after being dumped into the river, Madoc was to rise from beneath the floor, a strand of algae on his brow, and say peevishly, "The director and all the stage staff promised me there would be no water. If they think I'm coming back for the matinee, they're mistaken!" Did those out of the director's line of vision drop their jaws and roll their eyes? Did those in it grin and say, "Oh, Mike, what a good idea!"?

The unsuccessful suitor, Slender, who is for some reason got up as Oscar Wilde, doesn't add notably to the gaiety of the evening by producing a tiny ukulele and accompanying himself on "My Dog Has Fleas". At least, however, he remains on stage. The posse that chase Falstaff, hearing that he is disguised as a woman, stream into the aisles and even force their way along the rows, pointing at patrons and asking, "Is it you?" At such moments, I feel the actors are not my enemies, but my brothers in sorrow. My greatest sympathies, though, were reserved for the one child in the cast. He looked, not unreasonably, as if he were being put off Shakespeare for life.

To 6 July (01584 872150)