All’s Well That Ends Well – Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

Writer: William Shakespeare

Director: Blanche McIntyre

Notwithstanding themes of class/status, loyalty, testoster-moronic swagger glorification of war, the febrile context of women’s roles as possessions, there remains the indisputable singularity that heart-throb hero, swash-unbuckling his pants off given half a chance, Bertram, is a teenage, chauvinist, adulterous, glory-seeking, philandering dolt. Point taken.

However, being ‘deceived’ into consummating a marriage by a highly questionable justified ‘sex-swop’ plot device (a much darker transaction explored in Measures For Measure) might lend some mitigating sympathy – but not much. Helena and Diana’s wiles and guiles conspiracies meanwhile are seen as holding a torch for the hard-wired sisters bringing a touch of deus ex machina ethical cleansing to an otherwise mucky denouement. ‘And lawful meaning in a lawful act, where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.’ Unpick that one moral determinists.

Meanwhile, Parolles’ bromide homily to Helena, the better for her to surrender of her burdensome virginity is a provocative challenge to Director, Blanche McIntyre’s take on Shakespeare’s contemporaneous feminist critiques. Fasten seatbelts then – there’s a roller-coaster bumpy ride from Happy Days to Hades about to unfurl with all the stage-rage, pomp and tattoo braggadocio of a Paris v Tuscany flag/willy-waving pageant.

Away with the Fool/Clown’s interminable cryptic drivel – Will Edgerton’s take on the character as Lavache (the butt-end of a French pantomime cow?) has him popping up behind sofas in his Dennis The Menace striped top with the affected gormless swagger of The Fast Show’s ‘Brilliant Kid’. And infinitely all the better for the play’s pill-popping adrenalin-rush furious pace. Poaching deer in the King’s Estate, indeed! Young Will’d been mashed on mushrooms – forsooth.

Claire Benedict’s baroque, magisterial Countess, has formally taken-out copyright on this role for a generation to come. The school-uniformed, allegedly ingenenu, Helena (Rosie Sheehy), a mercenary-focused madam if ever, coyly weeps in decoyed grief for her late father, all the time, as projected heart-throb emojis betray her girly-crush for the demonstrably undeserving Bertram. What a vacuous, teen-boy air-head if ever. A youthful Will Young look-alike, Benjamin Westerby grabs the ‘Lad’ stereotype by the virtual cod-piece and runs with it aglee. All’s well if he can get his end away.

McIntyre shrewdly surrenders to the populist milieu and allows, nay, lends ridiculous licence, to the scene-stealing, fourth-wall omerta breakout that is anti-hero, Parolles. Jamie Wilkes has a naughty rascal’s eye on playing to the stalls and gallery for anarchic laughs, though his inevitable exposure as fickle informant and turncoat has moments of empathic credibiity as he unburdens himself of the ridiculous faux-foam six-pack body-armour and cod-affected American accent. The denoument reveal has the now re-energised King Of France, an avuncular and splendid Bruce Alexander, bewildered by the youth of today, reaching boiling point and demanding that the renegade Bertram honours his marriage vows. As he professes his newfound adoration for the heavily pregnant Helena all seems happily ever after but McIntyre has a slam-dunk total black-out opinion about that. Rosie Sheehy’s superb Helena has had her eyes set on the main chance since Act One. Just wait till she gets him home.

The set-piece comedy routine where Parolles gets his comeuppance is high on ‘serves-him-right’ guffaws, literally hood-winked into betraying himself, it takes on a more sinister register as the boisterous troops take the now ubiquitous smart-phone selfies with him that are projected on to the Army Camp field-tent backdrop. Hostage/terrorist associations writ large. The programme notes include highly suggestive essays on the impact on contemporary adolescent cognitive development projected through the lens of Social Media’s influencers of body image, peer influence/acceptance and the ‘rabbit hole of filters and algorithms’. (David Eggers dark predictive satire, The Circle, is a go-to source: Hamish Hamilton, 2013.)

Given that Shakespeare was having a wind-up laugh with this giddy nonsense, the 1623 Folio was a cut ‘n paste job with rough drafts taken from discarded, broken clay tobacco pipes, there remain pertinent themes as relevant today moresoever than the Man could have envisioned. After all, he was a literary genius. This bonkers, blunderbuss, bangin’ on the money brilliant production does the RSC and the Bard bombast proud.

Runs Until 8 October 2022