All’s Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare’s least performed, most puzzling plays. Doctor’s daughter Helena is hopelessly in love with Bertram, who is socially way above her. When Helena cures the King of France of a seemingly terminal illness, he grants her request: the choice of any noble youth at court for her husband. Naturally, Helena chooses Bertram. Appalled, he marries her under duress but imposes impossible terms for their physical union and then hurries abroad to war. Helena, determined to have him, follows.
Director Blanche McIntyre’s patchily thought-out production is set in the present – cue flashy social media projections that introduce a made-for-secondary-school feel and serve to highlight the improbabilities of the plot (which Shakespeare partially masked by setting the action outside Elizabethan England). The romance aspect of the play is clinically dispatched: Helena (Rosie Sheehy) is brisk and determined; Bertram (Benjamin Westerby) comes across as arrogantly entitled; there is no spark between the two.
This production’s main interest is Bertram’s bad angel, the dandy, braggart soldier Parolles. When Bertram and his comrades, fresh from bloody battle, trick Parolles into believing he has been captured by the enemy, the coward instantly betrays country and companions. McIntyre exaggerates the cruelty of this gulling, even introducing a mock execution. Parolles (in a dazzling performance from Jamie Wilkes) becomes a quasi-tragic character. Wilkes is compelling but the action’s comic-tragic balance is disrupted.
While in Florence, Bertram tries to seduce a young virgin, Diana. He believes he has succeeded. However, in the play’s final, climactic act, Bertram returns to Paris and discovers that Helena and Diana tricked him: it was Helena’s virginity he took, and she is now carrying their child. His impossible terms have been satisfied. The ending is one of the best parts of McIntyre’s uneven production. Helena and Bertram stand alone, silently facing one another. We are left wondering: can all really be well?
As so often at the RSC, what is definitely not well is the way that many of those on stage struggle to deliver their lines: garble words, hammer rhythms, mangle meanings. This is not the actors’ fault; many lack experience and need proper training. The RSC has the resources to provide this; the question, here, is: why doesn’t it?
All’s Well That Ends Well is at the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until 8 October
