Stage Dragon: All’s Well That Ends Well – Guildford Shakespeare Company

Published on: 18 Oct, 2019
Updated on: 19 Oct, 2019

The GSC All’s Well…company. – Photo Matt Periera

By Alice Fowler

Not many plays give away their ending quite so daringly as Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Its themes – unrequited passion and sexual misconduct on a dizzying scale – are resonant, however, and in the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s latest production, gleefully explored.

This is a play with sexual politics at its heart.

Hannah Morrish and Gavin Fowler – Photo Matt Periera

This is a play with sexual politics at its heart. At first glance, it is hard to see how Helena (Hannah Morrish), heart-breakingly in love with her childhood sweetheart Bertram (Gavin Fowler), who scorns her at every turn, can be a feminist icon. Yet Helena is determined and, as the play unfolds, uses every trick at her disposal to capture the feckless (and, we cannot help but think, unworthy) Bertram.

Is this the definition of a strong woman? In Shakespeare’s time, perhaps.

Morrish is a wondrously expressive actress whose emotions slip across her face like clouds across a summer sky. We are with her all the way as Bertram – in Fowler’s portrayal a convincing mix of muscularity, vanity and appalling snobbery – repeatedly rejects her.

When Bertram departs for Paris, Helena follows and successfully cures the ailing Queen of France, using a recipe given to her by her late father. As a reward, the Queen gives Helena a ring and offers her a husband of her choice. Naturally she opts for Bertram who, horrified, leaves for war. He writes to Helena saying he will only marry her if she can acquire the family ring from his finger and become pregnant with his child: conditions that seem impossible to fulfil.

Director Tom Littler, a regular GSC collaborator, brings fresh depth and perspective to what, by Shakespearean standards, can seem a straightforward tale. The drama unfolds to the music of Fleetwood Mac, while two pianos (played with aplomb by Stefan Bednarczyk and Ceri-Lyn Cissone) stand at either side of the intimate stage at St. Nicolas’ Church. This musical accompaniment, comic and tragic by turns, emphasises that we are caught up in a high-stakes fairy tale.

The cast of six is uniformly strong. Robert Mountford cavorts and postures as Parolles, Bertram’s ne’er-do-well friend: a man who at the play’s start seems a verbose and innuendo-loving fool but by the end is something more sinister.

Mountford is a comic tour-de-force as he leads his friend astray: a performance for which his popping eyeballs alone deserve a standing ovation. Bednarczyk plays Lafew, the Queen’s counsellor, as an urbane Euro-diplomat; while Miranda Foster excels as the Countess, the Queen and an Irish widow in Florence.

As so often in Shakespeare’s writing, the generation gap looms large, with meddling elders pushing young people into arranged unions they detest. Littler takes this further, asking how, in years to come, our children will interpret the misdeeds of their parents.

This is the GSC’s 43rd production and its first London transfer: to the Jermyn Street Theatre, where Tom Littler is artistic director.  Catch it here in Guildford until November 2. After that – lucky London.

All’s Well That Ends Well runs at St. Nicolas’ Church in Bury St until November 2. Box office 01483 304384, www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk

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