All’s Well may be the title, but things definitely aren’t (to modern eyes, not even when we reach an apparently happy ending), for this is a story of a girl who has set her heart on marrying a man she has grown up with even though he’s made it quite clear he doesn’t want her. Her name is Helen, orphan daughter of a doctor who has been raised as the ward of the Countess of Rossillion and is in love with her son, young Count Bertram.
Chelsea Waker opens her production with Angela Hick’s soaring soprano up in the gallery, while below, Bertram and Helen circle each other before being joined by the rest of the cast in a phalanx chanting Latin; it's a formality framing this as an artificial story in which the comedy will be highlighted whenever there is opportunity.
Ruby Bentall makes Helen naïvely childlike while at the same time determined, and she gets her chance when she successfully uses one of her father’s medicines to treat the King of France for what seemed an incurable condition. The rasp-voiced despair of Richard Katz’s King fades with recovery, and in return he offers to grant her a wish. At her request, he orders Bertram to marry her.
Siobhan Redmond’s gentle Countess is very happy at their marriage, but Kit Young’s young Bertram is as impetuous and determined as Helen. He rushes off to join the Duke of Florence’s army. He won’t play the husband until Helen is pregnant with his child and can present him with the ring which he is wearing. He thinks that’s impossible, and if you don’t know the play, I’m not going to tell you how she does it—though it is a plot twist that isn’t restricted to this play, but it does involve another young woman whom Bertram is trying to get into bed: Georgia-Mae Myers’s Diana, who stays as virginal as the goddess she is named for.
There is a subplot involving Bertram’s buddy Paroles, a braggart whose mates make a fool of him. William Robinson makes him so lively, you even feel sorry for him, and he and Bertram embrace so passionately that you can’t help but wonder whether that could be a reason for Bertram’s not playing husband.
Played at speed with an emphasis on plot, there is not time to worry about realities; this is a production that manages to carry the audience with it.