1 October 2009: Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
1 October 2009: Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
Amherst Cinema, via satellite from London. Olivier Theatre, National Theatre. Closing night. National Theatre HD.
I still regret not knowing about the first broadcast in this new NT HD series, last June, the NT production of Racine’s Phèdre, with Helen Mirren in the title role. In an interview prior to the present broadcast, Nicholas Hytner mentioned that some 50,000 persons saw the Phèdre. I hope that many more persons will see this production of All’s Well; it deserves the widest possible audience.
In part of the interview preceding the broadcast Marianne Elliott, an associate director of the NT and the director of this production, was also brought in. It was a bit unsettling to hear her say that, having been offered a Shakespeare production in the Olivier (the largest of the three theatres in the NT complex), she chose All’s Well because she had never read it and never seen a production of it, and she wanted to approach a play of Shakespeare’s of which she had had absolutely no experience. Oh, dear. But her theatrical and directorial instincts would seem to be top-notch. She decided, she said, to endow the play with a kind of fairy-tale aura — perhaps to overcome the implausibility of the main action. At the same time she observed that the characters are more complex than one usually finds in a fairy tale.
Somehow this all blended together and came out right. The concept was clear, and the acting was marvelous.
The stand-out performers were the central four or five: Michelle Terry as Helena; Clare Higgins as the Countess of Rossillion; Conleth Hill, as Parolles; and Oliver Ford Davies as the King of France. Perhaps I should include in this list George Rainsford as Bertram. This last is a rather thankless role; Bertram is as close as Shakespeare comes to a low-life for a romantic hero. He seems to have no redeeming features whatever, except perhaps for a certain bravery on the battlefield. And he is known by the company he keeps, namely his “captain” Parolles, a worthless, morally bankrupt, extraordinarily self-aware knave and fool (and marvelously entertaining, as only Shakespearean knaves and fools can be); and yet even he is not bad enough to let go hungry. “A man must eat.” And yet Helena loves Bertram, and pursues him in the most determined way, setting all his faults aside. Michelle Terry makes the pursuit believable and even touching. It somehow helps that she is unusually plain. (How did she ever get to be an actress? Sheer outsized talent, I believe.) Rainsford managed to bring off the character convincingly; he is a rather rotten type, irresponsible and careless, morally bankrupt, but with youth and a future before him, unlike Parolles. Well, he has no father left alive to guide and correct him. Fatherless young heroes have the habit of not yet knowing their way and possessing a genius for getting into trouble by following the promptings of “nature.” His mother the Countess also l