A new modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s problematic comedy All’s Well That Ends Well has taken the stage at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London, exposing the clashing human desires at the heart of the drama. Directed by Chelsea Walker, the sleek staging lays bare the wavering tones and crisscrossing romantic passions of its characters without attempting to tie up the play’s loose threads in a confected happy ending.
Obsession, Snobbery and a Love Triangle
In Walker’s production, the low-born female lead Helena becomes Helen, played by Ruby Bentall as a smart, sympathetic figure who nonetheless falls victim to her own obsessive love for Bertram, portrayed by Kit Young. Bertram’s refusal to marry Helen initially seems motivated by social snobbery, but as the play unfolds, his passionate bond with fellow soldier Paroles (William Robinson) reveals itself to be more than mere homoeroticism.
Yet Bertram’s attraction to the virginal Diana (Georgia-Mae Myers) during his sojourn in Italy also rings true, setting up a kind of love triangle. The production exposes how Paroles feels genuinely hurt by Bertram’s betrayal of their desire for each other when he dallies with Diana and eventually weds Helen. As Paroles himself betrays Bertram in the gulling scene, the tangled web of passions and divided loyalties is laid bare for all to see.
Exquisite Costuming Captures Tonal Shifts
Rosanna Vize’s exquisite costume and set design, created in collaboration with Megan Rarity, exudes the glamour of a European fashion house. The cast congregates in sleek black sunglasses, poised as if to walk a runway at any moment. This self-conscious styling brilliantly captures the play’s tonal shifts between the comic and dramatic.
The beauty of director Chelsea Walker’s production is that it exposes the clashing human desires in the drama rather than attempting to paste over them.
Women Plot and Support in a World of Flawed Men
In Shakespeare’s female-driven plot, the women characters variously scheme and support each other amidst a landscape of dead fathers, an infantilized ailing king (appearing in his underpants like an overgrown baby), and Siobhán Redmond’s compassionate widow Countess. But Helen and Diana never come across as conniving schemers in Walker’s sympathetic rendering.
By the play’s end, Helen may technically have Bertram’s hand in marriage, his baby, and his ring, but no one pretends at joyful resolution as the plot creaks to its close. The dangling threads and unresolved desires are left to hang inconclusively, and the production is all the richer for resisting the temptation of a forced happy ending.
A Fresh Take on a Problematic Play
In exposing the messy, clashing human passions pulsing through All’s Well That Ends Well, Chelsea Walker’s production brings a welcome freshness to one of Shakespeare’s more problematic comedies. The sleek modern staging elegantly physicalizes the play’s tricky tonal balancing act between humor and unease, while the central love triangle is rendered with both sympathy and clear-eyed honesty about the selfish impulses that often masquerade as love.
Rather than attempting to sand down the troubling edges of gender and class that have led many to brand All’s Well That Ends Well as a “problem play,” this production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse boldly embraces those sharp points. In doing so, it reveals the messy, irresolvable humanity at the heart of Shakespeare’s strange comedy, in all its contradictory, confounding, endlessly fascinating colors.
The threads hang inconclusively and the production is all the better without a confected happy ever after.
– Arifa Akbar, chief theatre critic
