Finally Ending Well
Monday, June 30th by scott malia
A Dallas production of All’s Well That Ends Well is receiving strong reviews, particularly for its leading lady. One of the key points of praise is that it downplays Bertram’s dark side and adopts a tone that the critic likens to Jane Austen. In short, like all productions of this problem play, this version is being judged by how well it deals with the central problem.
And what a problem it is. In what may be the Elizabethan version of He’s Just Not That Into You, plucky Helena spends the entire play trying to get the reluctant Bertram to fall in love with her. Once she tricks him into impregnating her while in disguise, he does. Yay!!! Or should I say, “Yay?” This one could actually be called a Problems Play because its issues are myriad. First, it asks us to invest in a heroine who would degrade herself repeatedly for the love of a man. Feminists, start your engines, please. Next, when she actually succeeds, we’re supposed to be thrilled that this (expletive) finally came around.
As this reviewer noted, the trend lately has been to emphasize the unhealthiness of this relationship, so that the play becomes a story about Helena’s misguided need to win Bertram. While I’m sure that’s all edgy and deep, it gives the actor playing Bertram the most impossible dramatic feat requested of an actor. Part of the reason this production seems to work is that allows Bertram to grow and change throughout the play, not just in the last scene.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Well, I can’t really assess this play as a feminist or anti-feminist work of art…but who _hasn’t_ known a beautiful, intelligent, talented woman with a penchant for, shall we say, the real fixer-upper opportunities of the male gender? And you have to relish the magisterial spanking she gives Bertram in front of his King and his mother at the end of the play…whether it’s true love or not, I think he won’t be straying again anytime soon…