How does a modern-day production tie up the loose threads to Shakespeare’s problem play, with its low-born female lead who entraps a man of higher standing into marriage? Is she a proto-feminist, a social climber or a sexual coercer? And is this a comedy with funerals, or a tragedy with laughter?
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. Humour sits beside unease and crisscrossing romantic passions are laid bare.
Helena becomes Helen (Ruby Bentall) in this sleek modern-dress production, and is a smart, sympathetic character who is victim to her own obsessive love for Bertram (Kit Young). He presents as a social snob in refusing to marry her, but there is more to it than that: his male bonding with Paroles (William Robinson) does not so much contain homoerotic undercurrents as over-currents, with full-on snogs. Yet his physical attraction to Diana (Georgia-Mae Myers), the virgin daughter he meets in Italy, seems genuine, too.
So a kind of love triangle lies within this production. If Paroles betrays Bertram during his gulling, Paroles, in turn, appears hurt by Bertram’s betrayal of their desire for each other, through his dalliance with Diana, and eventual marriage to Helen.
The look of Rosanna Vize’s costumes (with Megan Rarity) and set is high-end European fashion house, with the cast congregating in black sunglasses, in formation, as if they are about to vogue. It is self-consciously poised, and captures the play’s wavering tone between comic and dramatic.
In this female-led drama, the plot abounds with dead fathers, an ailing king of France who appears in his underpants like an overgrown baby and older widows (including Siobhán Redmond’s compassionate Countess). The women either plot with or support each other, depending on your interpretation. Here they do not seem like hand-rubbing schemers, least of all Helen. She might have Bertram’s hand in marriage by the end, as well as his baby and his ring, but no one feigns happiness as the plot creaks to its close. The threads hang inconclusively and the production is all the better without a confected happy ever after.
• At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 4 January
