All’s Well That Ends Well (review)

The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company achieved a rare depth of setting by placing their production of All’s Well that Ends Well in the European theatre of World War I. This choice was not merely incidental to the action, as is often the case when stage properties and sounds are the primary references for a set. Instead, the CSC’s 2009 return to an earlier political conflict enabled their production to revisit an understanding of combat that could only have persisted during a historical time prior to the emergence of “total war.” The play opened with an a cappella recitation by Jolin Polasek (as the interpolated character Maudlin, a cabaret singer) of a soldiers’ trench song adapted for the stage from an archival field recording. Following the chorus of Auld Lang Syne, this existential trench song repeated just a single line: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” Never wavering, Polasek’s opening notes revealed an embedded history, at once recalling the pain of trench warfare and invoking the crisis of agency and circumscription of liberty in this problem play, which gave the first scene a depth that is not easily or often grasped.

On the night I saw All’s Well performed, Bertram was played by Justin McCombs in place of an ailing Christopher Guthrie, and working with script in hand on two days’ preparation, McCombs gave the performance a raw quality that did not tremendously diminish the character and which was admirably bolstered by his supporting cast. McCombs’s Bertram spent significant moments in the early scenes physically leaning on Lafeu, Parolles, and later, one or the other of the brothers Dumain, his script firmly on one shoulder, and his conscience (and timing) guided by their words. As Helena, Kelly Mengelkoch played well with the coy ambition and open sweetness of the young lady in the opening scenes, but she was at her best as the injured bride in act three, resigned to leave her husband at his request: “No, no, although / The air of Paradise did fan the house, / And Angels offic’d all: I will be gone,” she cried. Helena is still not so injured as to set Bertram at liberty without the pursuit of her oaths and intentions in order to compensate for the hurt he has incurred. In this production, the conspiracy of women Helena entered along with Sara Clark (Diana) and Amy Warner (Widow) was shot through with a tone of just revenge that complemented their performance of a Schadenfreude directed against Bertram’s approaching fall from power.

Matthew Lewis Johnson gave his characterization of Parolles an overweening and grating persona that both fit the character and, in those moments when his artificial smiles approached self-parody, became hard to watch. The redemption of his character came during the scene of his capture by the company of Tuscan soldiers he alienated: here Johnson’s Parolles groveled and spat pathetic oaths in his frightened and chastened moment of revelation. In the capture scene, the soldiers stormed through the aisles from the auditorium’s doors at the back of the house, and hid on the audience side of the simple exposed plywood used to define the stage’s wings. Their night-trooper movement was accompanied by the soldiers’ call and response using a mock-military “fft” sound accompanied by hand signals. As they closed in on Parolles, the soldiers’ hand signals and their covert call and response became more frenetic. Finally, they bagged his head and chest in canvas, and bound his hands with...