★★★★☆ It is almost a fable – although don’t expect unequivocal simplicity: Timon exhausts her fortune with ridiculous generosity. Then, impoverished and instantly friendless she behaves equally excessively, living as a hermit in a cave, developing a total hatred of all mankind to the extent of financing an attack on Athens, before dying.

★★★★☆ Here’s a brand new family comedy as combustively alive with wit, fun and insight as it was when first performed in 1664.For that the credit must go to the great French playwright Molière and to his posthumous partners: radical and ingenious re-writers, Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto and director, Iqbal Khan.

★★★☆☆ Merry Wives bears the fault marks of its hurried construction and is rarely revived. Characters from the Henrys are included but, his male followers apart, not linked to him. The action is limited to comic happenings, with no place for Falstaffian philosophy on greater issues.