Review: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, Shakespeare's Globe

If, like me, you shrug bah humbug to Panto season and its saccharine cavalcade of festive frivolous fluff, then you would do well to seek refuge at the Globe and its intelligently calibrated winter offering of All's Well That Ends Well.

Boccaccio’s Decameron may be theorised to be the inspiration behind the play - the candle lit Sam Wanamaker Theatre’s walls are lined with Renaissance tapestries, frolicking nudes in Arcadian pastures, a firm nod to the 14th century poet. But director Chelsea Walker has drawn from a very different Italian icon for her new production.

There’s something playfully Pasolini about the operatic chaos. Nuns and prostitutes galivant arm in arm whilst puff-chested young men but heads with the older, and balder, authorities. And not to mention simmering sexual undertones pulsating beneath every surface of gender clash.

Ruby Bentall plays Helen as a rosy-cheeked teenager flushed with the hot pulse of love, eyes glinting with adolescent innocence. She is the poor daughter of a physician, dejectedly in love with Bertram, the King of France’s favourite courtier way above her social station. But there’s a pugnacious rottweiler beneath the dainty chihuahua as she ensnares him and his hand in marriage.

He's no hero either. Kit Young’s Bertram brims with slick sixth form swagger. Drunk on testosterone he flees to Italy to seduce prostitutes. How to navigate that murky morality? Too much bravado and he’s an unlikable toxic misogynist, too little and he lacks the necessary gravity to hold the play in orbit. Young finds the perfect balance of youthful chutzpah, all wry smiles and cocked eyebrows, just naïve enough to get away with it. 

It’s not quite subversive enough to be anti-Panto. Walker’s embrace of the cold cynicism shivering at the core of the play is warmly welcome, especially with her directorial twist. Parolles, Bertram’s subordinate, steals a steamy kiss from his master. The audiences’ eyebrows flicker up in unison. Calm down. It’s not the first production to weave homosexual undercurrents into Shakespeare. But it adds layered intrigue to one of Shakespeare’s least popular problem plays.

Bertram’s harsh rejection of Helen takes on weightier, and juicier, heft. Then the cruelty emerges. Parolles’ treatment at the hands of Bertram’s flank of solders in the second act becomes less bluster and more bullying, shaded by homophobic darkness. All’s well that ends well? Hmmmm. We’ll be the judge of that.

All's Well That Ends Well plays at Shakespeare’s Globe until 4 January 2025

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner