FringeReview UK 2024

All’s Well That Ends Well

Shakespeare in the Squares

Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Drama, Family, Fringe Theatre, Interactive, Outdoor and Promenade, Theatre

Venue: Actor’s Church Covent Garden

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

This latest Shakespeare in the Squares production is bold, even groundbreaking. Director Sioned Jones played in the National Theatre’s 2009 production of  All’s Well That Ends Well, starring Michelle Terry and directed  by Marianne Elliott. The fairy-tale element was foregrounded, the quest turned medieval. Yet how turn fairytale into panto? This family-friendly, audience-participating All’s Well tries it with trombones. It’s a blast.

It was almost blighted. Rain then chilly weather for July forced the production inside the Shakespeare in the Squares Actor’s Church, where acoustics swallowed rapid speech-patterns: things markedly improved when actors slowed to allow the echoes to catch up. There’s simplification of some language, necessary cuts (we lose the “mingled yarn” speech), and delicious ad-libs.

Jones, who directed last year’s Twelfth Night, is determined though to iron out this wondrous, thorny ‘problem play’ and emphasise even further its farce. It’s an All’s Well rewritten by Parolles, its chief braggart and nearest to villain save the hero himself. “That’s my riddle”, as his apparent mistress says, shaming him at court. What do you do with a problem like Bertram?

One answer is to sing it. All the cast produce solos and rich ensemble singing; five of them play instruments: two trombones (male courtiers) and violins apiece (the younger women), accordion (Countess) and guitar (Parolles) with a neat flip-side at one point “Interval’. It’s neatly-wrought and ticks as many family entertainments as this play could hold. And you might be selected as a bride or suitor.

Music director Annemarie Thomas has arranged a gallimaufry of popular songs and a flatulent snatch of Wagner’s Tannhauser wedding march with a spirited Bella Caio cheek by jowl, as it were. Emily Stuart’s design proves flexible and minimal, props like swords turn an indoors or outdoors into a set. Costume supervisor Colette Robinson-Collcutt ensures we get Ruritania out of the rain in a riot of scarlet pomp.

The wonderful, wonderfully-informed Helena seems almost too big for the work she’s in. Poor orphaned daughter of a doctor, she’s brought up in the loving Countess of Roussillon’s home; and in turn loves the Countess’s son, heedless snobbish Bertram, her childhood friend. But uniquely for the period, she’s prepared to fight, even die for him, curing a king to win the hand of Bertram; then chasing the fleeing, scornful boy across Europe in disguise.

Helena is problematic, but rewardingly complex: her love’s initially mute yet proves her ferociously resourceful singleness. Yet she and Parolles engage in bawdy double-entendres on virginity at the start (cut-down here) just after a powerful soliloquy. Viola has just turned into Beatrice.

Helena (Kalila Taylor) suggests Helena’s sheer lack of coyness is all of a piece. In such a space inwardness is impossible and Taylor’s is the most exuberant, even joyful Helena I’ve seen, radiating fun with toughness. She transcends Helena’s contradictions by flattening bashfulness, but not warmth. She can brush off Parolles (Toby Gordon) though not Countess – also Widow – Fiona Bruce.

Bruce’s way with inching out Helena’s secret radiates from her eyes. As Widow too she exudes warmth to release Taylor’s simple, momentous declaration. Bruce manages tiny calibrations, both regal yet encouraging confession from Helena. Like Taylor, she sings beautifully too.

Bertram (Jack Ward) is here as dashing as he’s petulant. He looks the Bertram Helena might fall for, is particularly fine at shock and petulant outrage. Yet he can prove with a filament of warmth at the end capable of contrition and tenderness, and there’s joy in the final union. And Bertram’s had other seals lifted from his eyes, in Parolles’ unmasking.

Gordon’s dialled-up braggadocio is a delight and he struts the stage, pulling out children and adults, mixing brisk solicitude with his role. Parolles’ darkly bright self-knowledge on being found out produces his – and Gordon’s – great moment. Gordon savours each word in a defiant manifesto: “Simply the thing I am shall make me live.”

Diana and Lady in Waiting (Miiya Alexandra) starts the latter role as a petulant resentful servant envying favour towards Helena, but proves seductive as false seducer Diana and warm with both Bruce’s Widow (Diana’s mother) and Helena, who substitutes for her in the bed-trick: Bertram thinking he’s sleeping with Diana when it’s his wife he’s unwittingly consummating marriage with. This Diana, having suffered at Bertram’s words if not (as he thinks) hands, relishes her riddle.

Lafew (Lee Drage), and Gentleman (Jacob Yolland) share the role of Lord Dumaine, play trombones and in Drage’s case dispatch Lafew with some care and clarity, making the role like the Countess, nuanced and satisfying. Yolland proves fiery and funny as Gentleman, and both relish Dumaine.

King, Mariana and First Soldier, Claire-Monique Martin enjoys Mariana the most: as friend of Widow and Diana she revels in conspiracy. As King, Martin’s muffled by a pantomime beard, and given the space, delivery is further blurred. But Martin’s role is here uber-pantomimic: she’s never prostrate so you hardly register she’s cured. Her great moment comes in the epilogue, pulling off the beard declaring ”The king’s a beggar”, a thrilling tiny touch.

The monarch’s normally shaded “All yet seems well” this time admits of no cloud. It confirms a trend of transforming Bertram from the ill-grace and hypocrisy some productions left him in. In the 2018 Globe Wanamaker production, it’s confronting his already-born child, bonding a family unit. Tom Littler’s 2019 Guildford and Jermyn Street production,  a bijou six-hander suggesting problematic sibling feelings with the couple brought up together (the Westermark effect), was even more convincing: and framed by a teenage girl (a heartbreakingly radiant Helena in Hannah Morrish) listening to Fleetwood Mac, meditating on fairytale. It remains the definitive production of recent years.

Don’t go expecting such searing insights, but do go for a crack ensemble who will surely turn many to Shakespeare, and particularly this rarely-performed, achingly beautiful play. An endearing and uplifting enterprise.

Published July 7, 2024July 7, 2024 by Simon Jenner