All’s Not Well: A Review of RSC’s All’s Well That Ends Well

All was not well, nor did it end well on a Friday evening in the beginning of autumn at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. A very pregnant Helen and a very discombobulated Bertram stood alone on stage after the French King has delivered his epilogue. Exeunt omnes reads the final stage direction, but the reunited couple stood steadfast. They faced each other, a yard apart, tentatively touching fingers, but not embracing. They exchanged inscrutable gazes of, what? Misgiving? Uncertainty? Regret? But decidedly not love, joy, or relief.

It recalled for me the look of incredulity and disappointment that I’ve seen Isabella give Duke Vincentio in certain productions of Measure for Measure when he proposes marriage in the last scene. It is the same look that Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross share in the back of the bus after they’ve run out of the church where she was to marry someone else. The former may be a Shakespearean scene, but the latter is a closer parallel because Isabella is not yet trapped. Benjamin and Elaine, at least for that memorable final shot, are much like Bertram and Helen.

The spotlight narrows on the couple and then the stage goes dark, leaving the audience with an unsettling uncertainty. Maybe director Blanche McIntyre left the couple on stage despite the text’s stage direction specifically to underscore and emphasize that feeling. Dr. Erin Sullivan, Reader in Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham (and coincidentally my lecturer for the Shakespeare’s Legacy module in their…