All's Well That Ends Well

A young woman doctors a king, but can't seem to attract the man she loves. So, she makes a deal with the king that if she heals him he will force the man she loves to marry her . . .

I always felt Shakespeare's comedies were best served by the 1970s/1980s Shakespeare plays. "As You Like It," "Twelfth Night," "The Taming of the Shrew," &c. Were all superb.

The "problem plays," usually listed as comedies, have fine casts but none are quite as much fun as Shakespeare's better comedies. Here, a first-rate cast headed by Angela Down, Michael Hordern, Peter Jeffrey and Ian Charleson carry out William Shakespeare's "problem" play about yet another Shakespearean heroine who loves not wisely but too well.

You're unlikely to hear Shakespeare pronounced better. Hordern alone speaks the bard as naturally as if born in the Elizabethan period, and no one sounds like they're in a race to get the words out faster than anyone else..

This production is awfully dark. No doubt the world was mostly dark before Edison's electric light. It reminds me of conductors who specialize in "original instruments." It's interesting for a curiosity, but it's difficult to believe Mozart wouldn't have preferred to hear his music played by the instruments as they have improved for the past 200 years. Turn up the lights!

This award-winning BBC production brings life, enormous appeal, and intelligence to a play criminally underperformed. It's a pleasure to watch ... and re-watch ... and re-watch.

Let's start with the fact that the production itself has been hailed far and wide for its beauty and visual precision. Director Elijah Moshinsky patterned it after paintings of Vermeer, and even though this may be unknown to the viewer, it has a remarkable subliminal impact.

Now for the cast:

Angela Down is the truly perfect Helena (the heroine of the play). She looks the part -- comely yet intellectual -- and speaks her lines with the perfect emotional fit. Most importantly, her diction and enunciation, and the speed at which she says the bard's words, make everything she says perfectly understandable and perfectly apt within that emotional fit. The viewer never has to wonder "What did she just say?" or "What does that mean?" Nonetheless the lines are fluid, musical, emotional, and very human. To me, this is the sign of a true Shakespearean actor.

Celia Johnson as the Countess Roussillon (Bertram's mother and Helena's guardian) is equally fantastic. She's a pleasure to watch and listen to. Consummate acting.

Ian Charleson as Bertram, Helena's very reluctant love object, is suitably sullen and morose, yet we see the physical beauty and the inherent charm, nobility, and charisma which attracts Helena to him. Charleson, a very internal actor, never overplays the part. To some extent he sometimes almost underplays it, occasionally speaking softly whilst his compatriots declaim more loudly or forcefully. Yet he holds our attention and fits the role very well.

The supporting cast is almost without exception quite admirable -- some remarkably so. Excellent casting, and a lot of excellent acting.

All in all, a very good production which makes the play easy to understand and enjoy.

Highly recommended.

"Elijah Moshinsky's TV movie of Shakespeare's 'All's Well That Ends Well' is a funny love story with a twist. Angela Down does a great job playing Helena, who loves Bertram, played by Ian Charleson. Bertram is a nobleman who doesn't love her back. Helena, who learned a lot from her doctor father, cures the King of France and is allowed to marry Bertram. But Bertram runs off to Italy and asks her to do impossible tasks to prove she's faithful. Helena doesn't give up, follows him, and cleverly does what he asked, winning him over.

This movie is one of the best in the BBC Television Shakespeare series. It has beautiful designs, inspired by famous painters like Vermeer and Rembrandt. The costumes and sets are detailed and the lighting adds to the mood of the story.

The actors do a great job, especially Celia Johnson as the kind Countess of Rousillon and Michael Hordern as the funny and loyal Lafeu. Sinden is the thankful King of France and Down's Helena is strong and understanding.

The movie captures the complicated ideas in Shakespeare's play, which is often hard to perform. It's a good mix of funny and serious, romantic and realistic, and explores important themes like gender roles, class, loyalty, honor, trickery, and forgiveness. It also includes great quotes from Shakespeare like "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none" and "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together". It's a great movie that shows that everything can end up well."

In a sense, there has been too much effort and taste lavished on a problem play that is a long way short of Shakespeare's best. The Vermeer interiors and Rembrandt references look a treat, but (as well as being anachronistic by half a century) add weight where there is little in the text. A number of the performances do the same, including Angela Down's magnificent Helena, and Paul Brooke's Lavache, the least clownish, and most accountant-like, clown one could possibly hope to meet.

The problem is that if the play is read as a piece with serious psychological points to make and where motivation may be complex but remains explicable, then it is a hard play to watch. Bertram is a distinctly unappealing husband (Ian Charleson's performance does not find hidden depths) for a strong character such as Helena. The tormenting of Parolles by Bertram and his friends can be dismissed as Elizabethan knockabout, unless the treatment is highly realistic, in which case - as in this production - it looks like torture. The attempted seduction of Diana can be farcical, with the clever comedic logic of the rings and the pregnancy, but here seems simply unpleasant.

Donald Sinden's King is the sort of eye-rolling ham performance that will make sense of this play, but amidst the restraint he falls rather flat.

The stand-out performance is Celia Johnson's Countess, a lovely role brilliantly played. She is not the butt of any jokes, and so can be played tenderly. As with Sinden, the older style of acting suits the material. Sometimes, for example during the Florentine scenes, one aches for Johnson to be on screen.

It's not awful, just very much the wrong style, like filming St Trinians in the style of Cathy Come Home.

The production design of this video is based on paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, de la Tour and others. It is uniformly striking and lovely, and will live in the memory.

The acting performances are good, but uneasy, perhaps reflecting the problematic nature of the play. Ian Charleson's Bertram is cold, Angela Down's Helen is weepy, and so they stay for yards and yards of iambic pentameter. Only Donald Sinden as the King errs on the side of too much emotional variety, but it's hard to remember a Sinden performance in which he wasn't an explosive law unto himself. Michael Hordern and Peter Jeffrey battle deftly as Lafeu and Parolles, while Paul Brooke's Lavache is more menacing than witty. Pippa Guard's Diana is unfailingly dignified, and a small cameo by the aged Valentine Dyall proves unexpectedly moving. And as the Countess, Celia Johnson's presence is every bit as sympathetic here as it was in "Brief Encounter" 35 years earlier.

Any dissatisfactions mentioned in this review are just quibbles, however, as the play is rare and worthwhile, the production gratifies the eye, and no one writes a closing reconciliation scene like Shakespeare. Indeed, All's Well That Ends Well.