All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

You can't always get what you want. But you just might get what you need. The path to bliss is uncertain when you try to make somebody love you. Helena wants Bertram, but Bertram isn't interested in her. Can Helena's determination and clever trickery lead to a happily-ever-after? Shakespeare's provocative comedy eventually "ends well," but not without a measure of hurt, lies, and mistakes to get there. In the intimacy of the New Theatre, Amanda Dehnert directs Shakespeare’s coming-of-adulthood fairy tale of flawed and beautiful people finding their way.
1:30 performance, August 16^th, 2009.

If you’ve never seen/read All’s Well That Ends Well, click here for all you need to know.

                Once again, if you’re planning to see this play at Ashland you might want to skip this entry if you want to avoid spoilers.

                The New Theatre is a tiny, intimate space. It seats around 300 people, compared with 600 in the Bowmer Theatre and over 1,000 seats at the Elizabethan Stage.   So you are right next to the action. This is generally a very good thing, but it can also be very distracting, because sitting at such close range allows you to see every drop of spit that flies forth from the actors’ mouth. In this Sunday afternoon performance of All’s Well That Ends Well, our Helena was a virtual fountain spewing forth upon her fellow thespians. So I must confess that my immature classmates and I spent a good deal more time giggling over this than would be considered proper. (But dude, eeew. Gross!)

                The set was fairly spartan, a plain wooden stage with a gnarled tree in one corner and a large sheet hanging on a clothesline across the back. At the front of the stage, a large steamer trunk was placed. There were a few bits of antiquated furniture scattered about, like a phonograph and a beat-up wooden chair.  A silent figure came out with a suitcase and began opening everything up. He didn’t say a word, but he pulled props out of the steamer trunk and began playing the record player. Finally, he flicked a switch and a projector flashed silent-movie era title cards onto the white sheet, starting the play. Throughout the show, this miming Clown would bring in props to set the scene and keep things movie, always in complete silence. I thought it was a neat addition to the cast on the director’s part, and when combined with the film reel of title cards a really unique way to present All’s Well.

                The Clown was also cool because the actor also played all the other minor roles in the play. He played the Duke, Lavatch, the Dumaines, a Courier, and anyone else needed. He’d just toss on a coat, smooth back his hair or toss on a clip-on bowtie and bam! He was someone new. Played by Armando Duran (who also plays the title character in Don Quixote) the Clown/Ensemble became the thread that tied the play together, not the star of the show but that special thing you look forward to in every scene.

                All’s Well is such a weird play. Helena loves Bertram, who most emphatically does not love her, yet she chases after him with dogged persistence (she’s like a stalker, man) and devotion, determined to make their relationship work. Bertram’s a jerk, no way around it. Why Helena is so mad about him seemed bizarre to me – but then I got to thinking about Twilight. Edward’s a hugely control freak who sees no problem with lying to Bella, but she loves him blindly. Teenage girls across America croon about how romantic that relationship is. In that light, Helena’s actions don’t seem so strange after all. She’s just being a dumb, hormonal, stubborn teenager.

                Bertram and Helena are shown as being friendly at the beginning of the play. You get the definite impression of childhood friends. Even when she goes to the King’s Court to choose her husband, Bertram cheerfully waves at her with a “Whoa! What are you doing here? What a funny coincidence!” expression on his face. So it isn’t as if he objects to her, personally – it’s just that he really thinks of her as a kid sister, not his future wife. He marries Helena under pressure from the King and then abandons her to fight in Italy, and while there he seduces and beds the young Diana, only to abandon her too. When Diana follows him back to France, he denies knowing her until his lie is found out. This man is no prize, but actor Danforth Comins does his best to make Bertram likable, playing him as an immature youth who doesn’t really know what he wants from life.

                Parolles (John Tufts) and Lafew (G. Valmont Thomas) were both played very well, with Lafew the perfect foil to Parolles’ caricature of the manly soldier. Whenever Parolles came out on the stage I would just crack up because he was wearing several different ties. One would be tied across his chest like a soldier’s sash, another might be tied around his arm, and several would be around his neck. It was utterly ridiculous. 
 

Parolles' (John Tufts) cowardice is revealed through a trick masterminded by Lafew (not pictured) and the Duke of Florence (Armando Duran), horrifying Bertram (Danforth Comins).

                This play tied with Don Quixote for my favorite show. The creativity that went into the production was remarkable, and I didn’t feel there were any weak members of the cast. Any problems with story were due to Shakespeare’s script, not the actors/director, but I thought they did a great job at making this problem play plausible and fun.