All’s Well That Ends Well, now playing through August 31, 2008, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, is not really a comedy, though it does have many funny moments. Nor is it a tragedy, thanks to its turn-on-dime ending in which all of the problems that the playwright has taken such pains to contrive are suddenly tossed aside. That’s probably why audiences sometimes leave performances of All’s Well a little bit confused, maybe even let down. “It could have been funnier,” was a comment I heard from more than one person who had seen this current production.
But today, in an age when random is the new black, the play’s shaggy-dog story line and awkward transitions between humor and pathos don’t seem particularly jarring, especially since the performances are as engaging as the directing is inspired. Rachel Fowler captures both of these aspects in a fine, if somber, turn as Helena, a “gentlewoman” to Countess Rossillion (Beth Dixon). Having grown up in the house of Rossillion as the daughter of the recently deceased Count’s physician, she is like one of the family. Which is why her confession of love for Bertram (Erik Hellman), the young Count Rossillion, is at first too much for the Countess. But Dixon guides the Countess’s emotions ably. Indeed, watching Dixon struggle to reconcile her motherly love for her son with her even more layered love for Helena, whom she’d rather was a proper daughter-in-law than a mere ward, is one of this production’s many pleasures.
With the Countess’s blessing, Helena sets off to heal the ailing King of France (a terrific Paul Vincent O’Connor), who is wasting away with every tick of the clock. Helena has been an observant enough daughter of her father’s healing arts that she’s willing to bet her life with the King for the chance to choose her husband, regardless of her low station in society. Naturally she succeeds, naturally she chooses the immature and emotionally barren Count to be her own, and just as naturally the boy spurns her sincere affections, tramping off to war with his walking id, Parolles (another fine performance this summer for Allen Gilmore, who shined in Bach at Leipzig).
Gilmore’s Parolles seems to draw the best from those he shares the stage with, particularly Fowler and Hellman. In one priceless scene early on, Helena parries Parolles’s arguments regarding the non-existent virtues of virginity (he views chastity an overrated commodity; she recognizes his opinion for the self-serving, randy bluster that it really is). Similarly, when Parolles convinces young Bertram to prove his manhood to himself by disobeying the King’s command not to go to war with the rest of the men, of which he is not yet one, Hellman finally trades his character’s sheepish devotion to duty for a pair of stones. Parolles also gives Mike Ryan an opportunity to captivate us as “the Interpreter” during the play’s famous interrogation scene. Ryan injects his character with just enough Niko Bellic from GTA IV to convince us that Parolles might well believe that his interrogator means business, but Ryan’s accent is not so thick that his character is reduced to parody.
Weaving his way amid these fine performances is John Pribyl as Lavatch, a lecherous, comic trickster “in the household of the Countess.” Pribyl’s Lavatch is genius: Whether he’s shuffling into a scene to stir things up or simply standing on the catwalk above the stage to observe the mess unfolding before him, he serves as the conscience of the community, yet he never comes off as a moralist. Partly, of course, this is due to the fine material Pribyl has to work with, but Pribyl brings plenty to the table. Like a lot of people in the audience, I looked forward to and enjoyed every scene he was in.