William Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cAll\u2019s Well That Ends Well\u201d has long been grouped with the Bard\u2019s so-called \u201cproblem plays\u201d because it defies easy classification.<\/p>\n
Although the play has situations like those in the playwright\u2019s comedies \u201cTwelfth Night\u201d and \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing,\u201d the characters in \u201cAll\u2019s Well\u201d are more complex and flawed. A new production of the play finished up its run Sunday on the Old Globe\u2019s outdoor festival stage in Balboa Park. The second play of the Globe\u2019s summer Shakespeare season, \u201cThe Comedy of Errors,\u201d will open July 27 and run through Aug. 24.<\/p>\n
For many Globe-goers who saw \u201cAll\u2019s Well,\u201d this may have been their first experience with the play, since the company hasn\u2019t produced it onstage since 2007. Directed by Peter Francis James, this production didn\u2019t shy away from the play\u2019s darker elements, nor did it soften the sharp edges of its morally ambiguous characters. Instead it honored Shakespeare\u2019s intentions, celebrated the play\u2019s ribald wit, playfully satirized the intentionally buffoonish French and Italian nobles and filled the stage with dance, action, color and humorous interludes.<\/p>\n
At moments, director James tossed in anachronistic humor to heighten the play\u2019s accessibility for modern audiences, including a famous line from \u201cMacbeth\u201d and a reference to the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d character Bilbo Baggins. He also amusingly turned a mounted battle scene into a choreographed gavotte, performed with wooden swords and hobby horses.<\/p>\n
The play is about Helena, the orphaned daughter of the French king\u2019s physician. When Helena creates a potion that saves the king\u2019s life, he repays her by ordering the man she\u2019s obsessed with, Count Bertram, to marry her against his will. Rather than consummate the marriage, the Count sneaks off to war, but Helena tracks him down in Florence and tricks him into having sex with her rather than the local girl he covets, Maria.<\/p>\n
As Bertram, Gabriel Brown played well the spoiled and despicable cad. Ismenia Mendes\u2019s Helena started out shrill and obsessive, but over the course of the play her voice and demeaner softened and matured. Mary Lou Rosato was a warm and anchoring presence as Bertram\u2019s kind mother, the Countess of Roussillion.<\/p>\n
Angelynne \u201cAjay\u201d Pawaan had a noble ferocity as the virtuous Maria. Barzin Akhavan found the good and bad in his morally compromised character Parolles. And, as the court fool Lavatch, Matthew J. Harris exuberantly reveled in the naughty double-entendres in scenes about virginity and sex.<\/p>\n
The production in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre featured open-backed scenery by Lawrence E. Moten III that showed off the tree grove behind the Globe and it featured costumes by Judith Dolan, lighting by Sherrice Mojgani, sound by Melanie Chen Cole and additional staging and choreography by Javier Velasco.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll\u2019s Well that Ends Well\u201d is not one of Shakespeare\u2019s better plays. In the printed program, James said in an interview that Shakespeare shelved the play before he died and it was never produced until 125 years after his death. As a result, it lacks the Bard\u2019s usual polish. Some of its scenes are derivative and its secondary characters are under-developed. Nonetheless, James made the most of the material in the stylish, engaging and clear-minded production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cAll\u2019s Well That Ends Well\u201d has long been grouped with the Bard\u2019s so-called \u201cproblem plays\u201d because…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,8159,1582,276,171,1370,3549,3550,7264,1148,1072,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-48571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-balboa-park","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county","16":"tag-sandiego","17":"tag-theater","18":"tag-things-to-do","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114817424735182701","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}