Director Scott Wentworth's production of Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well," currently running on the Tom Patterson stage at the Stratford Festival, manages several impressive feats. First, it's incredibly funny. The humor derives from thought and character, and is earned via a deep understanding of the ridiculousness and irony of the actions we are watching. (For a play not known for its yuks, there are way more than "The Miser.") Secondly, on a dialogue level, it's sparklingly clear. The actors communicate the stealthily knotted language of this late middle-period problem play with grace and ease. The production is a great listening experience. Thirdly, through a primary combination of these two elements, plus many others, it's likely as good as any -- if not better than every -- "All's Well That Ends Well" you've ever seen. The play is staunchly hard to love, but Wentworth and Co. manage to create as ideal an "All's Well..." as the imaginative reader could envisage. He gives us a mature, nuanced tale of age versus youth, with palpable discomforts and deep autumnal pleasures. I'd grown wary of the play, particularly in light of the recent milquetoast production at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, but Wentworth has me singing the gospel of "All's Well..." and ready to follow the fold and stray no more.
The play tells the story of Helena (the rigorously excellent Jessica B. Hill). Helena is an orphan under the care of the Countess of Rossillion (Seana McKenna). She is in love with the Countess's son Bertram (Jordin Hall, making as much human sense as is possible of one of Shakespeare's toughest assignments), but fears her lower social rank means such love could never be. When Helena cures by mystical art the ailment of the King of France (Ben Carlson), she is offered her choice of husband and lights on Bertram. Sadly, Bertram may have tolerated Helena as something like an adopted sibling, but finds the idea of deigning to marry a woman of her class repulsive, and promptly runs away to war. Helena is thus set on her task of winning her intended back, by hook or by crook.
Much ink has been spilled in the designation of "All's Well..." as a "problem play," but such an academic judgment has more purchase in the classroom than the theatre. Rarely does one sit in one's seat and ask "what genre of the Bard's will I be watching tonight?" The play Wentworth uncovers certainly has its attendant problems, but in this production, those problems feel baked into the fabric of the drama, not exterior to it. The ultimate coupling of Helena and Bertram is a definitively conflicting event: he for numerous acts of chauvinism, she for bed-tricking subterfuge (Helena appoints the virtuous Diana to have an affair with Bertram, then in the dark of the bedroom, finds her own way to the marriage-bed in Diana's place). But, what Shakespeare has joined together, let no soul put asunder. Perhaps these two idiosyncratic, socially-challenged individuals really are made for each other after all, whatever issues an outside eye may have.
An unexpected star turn comes in the form of Andre Sills' singular interpretation of the servant/clown, Lavatch. Lavatch is sometimes cut entirely (as he was in American Players Theatre's 2010 production), or turned into a senile old man (Great River Shakespeare Festival, 2018). His humor-ish witticisms perpetuate the oft-repeated notion that Shakespeare's so-called jokes are often less funny than your average eye-gouging. Sometimes the best you can do is say "I guess this was funny back then?" But Sills, through good-natured roguery, and impressive depth of feeling, turns Lavatch into someone who is in fact quite pleasant to be around. The humor reads, and his role as a commentator in the play's class-based dialogue rings true.
Every ensemble member pulls their weight. McKenna as the Countess brings her customary zeal for clarity, as well as a rich spring of maternal feeling for Helena. In the play's finale, Helena is revealed as alive after a ruse she started claimed her deceased. The transposition of lines that allows the Countess to find the resurrected Helena standing in front of her at journey's end and utter a joyfully stunned "do I see you living?" brings tears to your eyes. A similar textual addition that has the King offer Diana (an excellently stalwart Allison Edwards-Crewe) her choice of husband, and Diana's subsequent avowal to live chaste, packs a one-two punch of hilarity and contemporary righteousness. Rylan Wilkie walks an intelligent tight-rope as the cowardly Parolles: both scoundrel enough to laugh at, but familiar enough to pity. We may laugh at the plot that reveals Parolles as a coward and potential traitor, but most of us weren't born to hold up well under interrogation, and the delights of Parolles' function come from our own recognition of ourselves in him.
RSC director Trevor Nunn described "All's Well That Ends Well" as "Shakespeare's most Chekhovian" play, and while such a designation could feel like either a cop-out or an invitation to melancholic wankery (on the production team's part, not Anton's), Wentworth's wonderful production renders the idea fitting and fruitful. Most of us don't grow old in the vein of King Lear, or experience our decline as a titanic battle between cosmic forces of nature and nurture. Most of us simply go quiet into that goodnight without much fanfare. The Countess, the King, the artful Reynaldo (Nigel Bennett) and the sage Lafew (Wayne Best) are not Cordelia's father, nor were they meant to be. Their journey into the sunset rings true by its familiarity, not its intensity. The Countess says when she finds out to her delight that Helena is in love with her son Bertram:
"Even so it was with me when I was young:
If ever we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn
Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;
Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;
It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth:
By our remembrances of days foregone,
Such were our faults, or then we thought them none."
The Stratford "All's Well..." earns that bittersweet contemplation, and successfully makes the case for the play's spot in the repertory. See it and be convinced.
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