All’s Well That Ends Well
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Caroline Byrne
Dramaturg: Anne Siddons
Designer: Colin Richmond
Composer: Theo Vidgen
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
at Shakespeare’s Globe
Saturday 20th January 2018, 14.00
Paige Carter – Diana
Nigel Cooke – King of France
Imogen Doel – Paroles
Martina Laird – Countess of Rousillon / The Widow
Buchan Lennon – George Dumaine
Louise Mai Newberry – Mariana
Shaun Mason – Edward Dumaine
Will Merrick – Bertram
Rob Pickavance – Lafeu
Hannah Ringham – Clown
Ellora Torchia – Helena
This is only the second time I’ve seen the play, better known by its title than its plot, and the first was the 2013 RSC production, hailed by many as the gem of a brilliant RSC season, which I still think of as the “Alex Waldmann Season.” He played Bertram. I became interested in the play itself. All’s Well That Ends Well is circa 1606, and is classed now as a problem play and unlike the other problem plays, is rarely done. The Times surveyed critics in 2016 and asked them to rate the 39 plays in order of quality. All’s Well That Ends Well came 36th out of 39.
It used to be classed as a comedy, but it’s not very funny, and like The Winter’s Tale the first half is mainly humourless with some comic scenes in the second part. The 19th and 20th century critics disliked the “fairy tale” element and could not see Helena’s motivation. What fairy tale element? I’ll come to that.
The “dramaturg” has been a feature of the last two years at The Globe, and this is still an Emma Rice era production. I’d assume a dramaturg adds new stuff, because surely the director chooses where to cut a play. Dramaturg is a role I’m never too sure of. We’re seeing it early in its run, always more interesting as that means no reviews had been seen, no images published online until the day we saw it. The RSC had a cast of nineteen in 2013, and they did quite a bit of doubling. The Wanamaker has a cast of just eleven. They have added songs, made major cuts and most importantly changed the ending to introduce a baby. Less importantly they chose the spelling Rosillon instead of Rousillon, and Paroles instead of the sometimes used Parolles. I’m ignoring the first, because it’s a real place and not one commonly Anglicized, but going with the second because it makes pronunciation sense.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Lady Windermere’s Fan was the play we had seen the night before. This famous quote was in my mind during All’s Well That Ends Well . We’re at the end of the heavily-criticized Emma Rice regime at The Globe, and here her critics were given just what they wanted. No electric light, no recorded sound and a return to straight Jacobean costume. Regular Wanamaker Playhouse theatregoers know the problem of the massive candlelit chandeliers. If you’re in the Upper Gallery, it’s extremely hard to see through all those flickering lights to the stage, and the angle looking down means you see more of bald patches than mouths and eyes. So we chandelier complainers got what we wanted. They only used them once and briefly. It was all candles in small four-arm candelabra on stage, or handheld with a metal mirror to reflect on the face. Add mainly black costume. Result? You couldn’t see very much at all. I recalled how pictures of pre-electric light theatres often showed actors in white pancake make up with bright lipstick and eyes. Yes, it’s so you can see facial expression in poor light. Here you just didn’t see facial expression.
I found the rigmarole that this tenebrous approach entails borderline comical, the sort of thing you could see being sent up in a sketch-show. Not only is it hard to see facial expressions, but the sense of where we are, the time of day and what the characters are up to goes missing in the dismal murk, and at points the candle flames seem to come hazardously close to the costumes.
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph 18 January 2018
The plot: Helena is a doctor’s daughter. She has admired the aristocratic Bertram from afar. Her doctor dad was employed by his father, the Count of Roussilon. The old count dies, and Bertram assumes the title and goes off to the French court as ward of the king.
All is not well with the King of France (Nigel Cooke)
The king is very ill and no doctors can find a cure. Helena offers to cure him, threatened with death if she fails, or anything she wishes if she succeeds. She cures him. That to me is the “fairy tale” bit, and her potion is no more magical than what the apothecary serves up in Romeo & Juliet. Shakespeare needed something to put the king deeply in her debt. The king gives her the choice of his four wards, including Bertram, as bridegrooms. Her wish is to marry Bertram, who is appalled because she’s a commoner, a mere doctor’s daughter.
“I’m not well …” The King (Nigel Cooke) and Helena (Ellora Torchia)
Bertram runs off to the war in Tuscany, declaring that he will only be married to her once she has a child by him, but he declines to consummate the marriage. She must also acquire the ancestral ring that never leaves his finger. I guess impossible tasks are fairy tale? The war is a proxy one for the French, who decline to join in a Tuscany v Siena conflict, but let their men fight for their favoured choice, the Duke of Florence (a character eradicated in this version). In modern terms we’d call them military advisors, or say they were helping train his troops.
Helena follows him as a pilgrim and lodges with a widow. She discovers Bertram is after the Widow’s daughter, Diana, a local beauty. (Diana was the goddess of chastity). Bertram says he has “sick desires.” Oh, dear. Helena persuades Diana to submit to Bertram’s entreaties and then to swap places with her in the dark. Helena conceives. Lucky maybe, but not magical.
The play, as shown by the fabulous RSC production in 2013, modernizes well. The plot, that she is the pursuer and Bertram the pursued reverses normal gender politics in a fashionable way. It has a lot to offer a director. For us, this production failed and flopped. The programme notes by dramaturg Annie Siddons say:
(Helena) chooses nature, her skill, her intention, her fearlessness. Her magnetism is so great that her girl squad – Mariana, Diana and The Widow – are prepared to do anything to help her. But in the great ambiguity of this play it not just her charisma that makes her offer to them irresistible. It is also her gold.
This should be a play then about an assertive and charismatic woman, but the way they played it, Helena came across as a sad and needy stalker with enough cash to bribe people, and Bertram was a twerp with tantrums. Neither actor convinced us.
Well … Helena (Ellora Torchia) spends far too much time fiddling around with floor tiles
Blame the director of course. Helena barely left the stage, and was dressed in what looked like a grubby petticoat, with bits on top, and when she got changes, they were just as dour and grubby white. At the end, with a newborn baby in arms, her clothes looked bloodstained. Because she was virtually always on stage, she was crouched or hunched up on the floor at the back much of the time. Then inexplicably, the director decided she should spend much time crawling around lifting the dark tiles off the floor and piling them up, revealing a mirrored underfloor. Poor Bertram had to do some tile lifting too. In the second half thankfully the tiles had gone, and the mirrored floor amplified the candlelight. The result of all that crawling and crouching for no particular purpose is she seemed crazed and perhaps in deep depression rather than assertive. The actor’s physical slightness didn’t help. The part was charisma-free and costume really took away from her.
Welling up: The Countess of Roussillon (Martina Laird) and Bertram (Will Merick) who is off to the Royal Court (which is not the Chelsea theatre)
Then Bertram was the twerp appalled at marrying a commoner. Yes, that’s the text. But there should be an element of spark between them before he rejects the forced marriage. The interesting bit here, the reason why the play attracts me, is that we have a male in the position of the harassed one, the one forced into a relationship. It’s not the normal way round, but then I think of the girls camped out outside rock star’s houses rifling through the dustbins. And Helena comes across like one of those here. The audience is going to feel some sympathy with Bertram, in spite of his snobby choices. He has shown no sign that he likes her. He was forced against his will. So off he goes to war, and proves himself a hero (there were cuts that glossed over that). It’s like the old rude rhyme Daniel in The Lion’s Den:
“Daniel! My daughter is pregnant!” said the king. “What steps are you going to take?”
“Bloody great long ones,” said Daniel as he strode off into the desert.”
He barely got to demonstrate his heroism, and his rejection of Helena was indeed a tantrum. So I disliked the interpretation put on the two leads. Flying Helena off at the end of part one and back on in part two is merely distracting … but she was given so many background distracting tasks.
The King of France was a key part. A Jacobean audience would have known he was acting badly towards his ward. He is also a hypocrite when he tells Bertram:
‘Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which I can build up.
Strange is that our bloods, Of colour, weight and heat,
poured all together would quite confound distinction
Yet stands off, in differences so mighty. (Act 2, Scene 3)
However, in spite of such an early socialist speech on equality, he is using his brute royal power to force Bertram against his will.
The bit we both liked was the one that some didn’t. That was the way they managed the essential Diana / Helena bedroom swop. Diana was played by Paige Carter … one of the better performances of the day. They used the back entrance curtain … nothing elaborate. The two women wore identical shifts. Diana went in with Bertram and got him worked up. Then she slips out (just going to the bathroom to change into something more suitable for your “sick desires”, I’ll only be two seconds, perhaps) and Helena slips in. At that point the well-aroused Bertram isn’t going to notice, or possibly care . Throughout both legs and arms and heads pop through the curtains.
Plays it well. Imogen Doel as Paroles
The main comedy character is Paroles, the cowardly captain who is Bertram’s pal and goes off to the wars with him. It’s a classic character, the boastful soldier, that goes back via Pistol and Falstaff to Plautus. This production has the obligatory gender-switch, with Imogen Doel playing Paroles, just as she switched to play Tranio in Caroline Byrne’s production of “the Irish” The Taming of The Shrew in 2016. Hannah Ringham does a further switch as The Clown. They decided to cast females as Paroles and the Fool. Why? OK, people ramble on about going for a 50/50 gender casting. Some parts work very well (The Fool doesn’t matter), but you’ll never successfully get 50/50 with the texts. The result is too often the play at the All Girls Grammar School. Imogen Doel is a very fine comic actor. She was a glorious Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest and she switched gender to play Tranio in The Taming of The Shrew. Here she gets the best costume and swaggers with aplomb, but the play is about male / female relations. Paroles is supposed to be a fake, pretending to be of noble birth when he’s not, and at the RSC, Jonathan Slinger dropped his put-on RP accent when found out. So maybe the “fake” justifies casting across gender. We thought it confusing, and a daft directorial decision which the actor worked very hard at and played well, but in the end it weakened the character,
The big comedy scene is where Paroles gets captured by Bertram’s sidemen. Can we call them the Côtes du Roussillon? They want to prove he is a coward, so pretend to be foreign troops with a weird language (compare Two Gentlemen of Verona and the outlaws). It was not helped by murky light, then placing Paroles in a pit so we could only see his head. Then the gang were sometimes in the audience Pit. It’s an intrinsically very funny scene, but we felt under-cooked here.
That “magic” scene where the king is cured was done in a bath. A good idea. Helena has some herbs. The king gets in the bath, lies back, has his arms washed in the bath water by her. Some years ago we discovered some Oil of Wintergreen bath salts. They removed all aches and pains. Then my companion started getting stomach pains. Oil of Wintergreen is closely related to aspirin and bathing in it was like taking very large doses of aspirin. The skin is the body’s largest organ and absorbs it. So a miracle bath as a plot device worked for us. The king had to reveal his naked bottom leaving, but it was so dark it wasn’t a problem for him or us. Later, Helena gets to have a bath after arriving as a tired pilgrim, and her blushes are carefully spared. Got a bath? Might as well use it.
Not a well, but a bath. Helena (Ella Torchia) and The Widow (Martina Laird)
There were added music and songs, or perhaps ‘some parts were sung.’ The soldiers at war scene was reduced to percussion and shouting, but because they can walk drums right round the corridor surrounding the Wanamaker Playhouse, it sounded superb.
Overall, we thought the production failed the play. It has had some very positive reviews (though not from The Guardian or Telegraph or Times). I suspect people are surprised to see how good this under-rated and too rarely performed play is … as a play, that is. Mark Shenton in The Stage says “I was with four other critics earlier the same day, and not one had seen a production of it.”
Comparisons across time are irritating, especially since the RSC’s definitive 2013 production just pre-dates the NT Live / RSC Live to cinema broadcasts, so is not available on DVD. I hate it when critics say, ‘Ah, but if you’d seen John Smith and Mary Brown in the 1994 production in Littlehampton …’ but I’m going to have to do it. The play is far better than its reputation. This was not a good version of it. It was one of those times when the three hour drive home in the rain really did not seem worth the effort of going. It did not end well.
Overall **
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
4
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****
Matt Wolf, The Arts Desk ****
3
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, ***
Mark Shenton, London Theatre co ***
Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times ***
2
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian **
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph **
Anne Treneman, The Times **
REVIEWS ON THIS BLOG:
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
All’s Well That Ends Well RSC 2013
CAROLINE BYRNE
The Taming of The Shrew – Globe 2016
IMOGEN DOEL
The Taming of The Shrew – Globe 2016
Importance of Being Earnest, 2015 by Oscar Wilde (Cecily) with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell
PAIGE CARTER
Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2016 revival, at Chichester
Much Ado About Nothing – RSC 2016 revival at Chichester
MARTINA LAIRD
Coriolanus – RSC, 2017
Romeo & Juliet, Globe 2017
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