All’s Well That Ends Well

All’s Well That Ends Well

Reviewed by Katie Buenneke
A Noise Within
Through March 6

All’s Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” texts that can’t easily be categorized as either comedy or tragedy. All’s Well has all of the trademarks of a Shakespearean comedy: a marriage plot, mistaken identity, a clown or two, and a happily married couple in the finale. But the ending is not exactly cause for celebration, which ends up being the problem director Nike Doukas doesn’t quite solve.

The story centers on Helen (Erika Soto), a French woman of common birth who is in love with her boss’s son, Bertram (Mark Jude Sullivan). Helen saves the king’s life, and in exchange, the king (Bernard K. Addison) gives her money and lets her choose a husband from his court. She chooses Bertram, but he is so upset by her inferior social status that he goes to war in Italy rather than consummate his marriage. He says he’ll only be her husband after she gets a ring he never removes, and is pregnant with his child. With a few plot twists that I won’t spoil, despite the play being 400 years old, Helen and Bertram wind up living happily ever after?

It’s a frustrating finale, given that Doukas and Soto paint Helen as a clever, capable young woman, who has been granted enough wealth and status that you root for Helen to choose a different partner. I couldn’t help but wonder why she’s hung up on rude Bertram, when she’s surrounded by plenty of eligible men who don’t despise her. Or, given Shakespeare’s penchant for homoerotic subtext, why couldn’t Helen and Diana eschew the man who tried to take advantage of both of them and end up as a couple?

The show also sidesteps a significant issue of consent. Helen achieves her goal by performing a “bed switch” with Diana (Nicole Javier), meaning when Bertram thinks he’s sleeping with Diana, he’s actually sleeping with his wife. By most contemporary understandings, having sex with a person who doesn’t consent to the act is sexual assault, something that’s not addressed in this 21^st century production. I’m not inclined to forgive Helen for assaulting Bertram, just because she was doing it in the pursuit of true love — it’s not true love if you’re having sex with someone who has made it explicitly clear he doesn’t want to have sex with you. But maybe people viewed it differently in the 16^th century.

For those like me who haven’t seen a Shakespeare play in a few years, it takes a while for the brain to flip the switch where the play’s swaths of Iambic Pentameter becomes clear, so I was grateful for the very helpful plot synopsis in the program.

Amongst the strong cast, Kasey Mahaffy, as the First Lord Dumaine, shines brightly in his few speaking moments, and always making the text feel easy to comprehend. Rafael Goldstein is also funny in the role of the frustrating Parolles, one of Bertram’s friends who is somewhere between a sad sack clown and an antagonist, a combination that could make him easy to despise, if not for the charm Goldstein brings to the role.

The costumes, by Angela Balogh Calin, for the most part feel appropriate to the 16^th century, though the garish items that Parolles and the clown Lavatch wear are a lot to take in. Frederica Nascimento’s scenic design feels too spare, especially in the presence of the King of France, whose presence inherently evokes extravagance.

This is a curious production, in that while I didn’t agree with how the ending was presented, it made me want to wrestle with the text and explore a different way of telling the story. Guided by Soto and Doukas, this Helen, who reverses so many gender roles, is one of Shakespeare’s more compelling heroines; she deserves a better ending.

For an alternate view, listen to this week’s Stages of Our City podcast.

A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd. Pasadena; Thurs. at 7:30 p.m., Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m.; through Mar 6. Anoisewithin.org. Running time: two hours and 20 minutes including a 15-minute intermission.