FIVE STARS

 

The general critical view that All’s Well That Ends Well is a no-good play, which has been boldly challenged in the past by the great Harold Bloom, is now firmly disproved in a cracking new production from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

A principal reason for previous revivals at Stratford has been the opportunity to cast some grande dame of the stage (Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft, for instance) in the role of the play’s placid matriarch, the Countess of Rosillion. The last of these was Judi Dench at the Swan Theatre ten years ago. Now the honour falls to Charlotte Cornwell, whose beautifully spoken, nicely nuanced performance — with a touch of naughty sparkle in her dealing with her domestics — is not the least delight of Nancy Meckler’s modern-dress production.

On view, in fact, are a glittering array of top-class performances, including that of former Cherwell School pupil Alex Waldmann as the principal character, Bertram. The son of the Countess, this champagne-swilling party animal — “think Prince Harry,” Alex advised in a recent Oxford Times interview — is the secret passion of her adopted daughter Helena (Joanna Horton). When she uses her medical skills to cure the King of France of a distressing long-term ailment, the delighted monarch (excellent Greg Hicks, cartwheeling in his glee) rewards her with Bertram’s hand in marriage — to the lad’s obvious fury.

Shirking any marital duties, he heads for the wars in Italy in the company of his devoted lieutenant Parolles. How devoted becomes apparent in the covert homosexual attraction he displays towards his master. In a delicious comic turn from Jonathan Slinger we are shown a compelling picture of a cad and a coward whose upper-class drawl and absurd moustache are revealed in the end to be equally sham.

Following his hilarious exposure — by a group of colleagues led by the Lords Dumaine (Mark Holgate and Chris Jared) — he maintains a dignity in his fall (“But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft/As captain shall”). In this (as the aforementioned Harold Bloom observed) he remains the “emblem of the rancidity that underlies [the play’s] courtly surfaces”.

Parolles is also very funny, like so much else in this riveting production. And even if it doesn’t end well for him — or for Bertram — it certainly does for members of the audience. A big hit.

 

Until September 26
0844 800 1110, rsc.org.uk