Her motives aren't entirely altruistic though, as she promises the King she'll cure him in return for a husband of her choosing. When she succeeds she picks Bertram (Kit Young,) a nobleman in whose court she grew up, and whose mother the Countess (Siobhán Redmond) enthusiastically approves of the match.
Unfortunately Bertram himself is horrified at being forced to marry someone he considers beneath him, and after the ceremony disappears to whatever army is currently nearest, leaving Helen with only a list of fairytale-style impossible tasks she must complete before he accepts her as his wife. A list that always annoys me by being only two tasks long, completely screwing up the fairytale Rule of Three. I mean if you can't think of a third task just ditch the second one, the demand to have his baby without having sex with him should theoretically be enough, as long as she's not (spoiler alert) a rapist or anything.
A lot of what makes All's Well a problem play in the modern sense is that the leads are both largely presented as funny and sympathetic, which is at odds with their actual, toxic even by Shakespearean standards, behaviour. The most successful way of dealing with it I've seen is to embrace their unlikeable traits from the start, and that's Walker's approach: Bentall's Helen is a dead-eyed stalker who slowly but relentlessly tracks Bertram through France and Italy like the demon from It Follows. She has her funny and even charming moments but at no point can her obsession be mistaken for anything remotely healthy - even if you view her as neurodiverse, as Bentall seems to suggest, her actions go way beyond what's forgivable.
Unusually for Shakespeare it's the male lead who's marginally less problematic, as his worst behaviour comes after he's been repeatedly manipulated and abused; still, there's always elements of the shallow fuckboi to Young's performance, which is really the side of him that dominates after the interval. If the leads are far from unambiguously sympathetic though, the real coup in Walker's production is the way it reinvents and centres itself around the character of Paroles, Bertram's comedy sidekick and usually portrayed as entertaining but untrustworthy, a lying, vain and loud braggart.
Paroles' insult comedy always had a hint of camp about it anyway, and William Robinson dials this up to introduce the character with a bitchy, queeny stream of attacks on Helen. Having seen so much Shakespeare and so many attempts to reinvent a character, I know all about clever-seeming ideas that don't stand up to too much scrutiny, so I love it when one actually works on every level. And Walker and Robinson's repositioning of Paroles as a tragic victim is a particularly satisfying case of the latter.
If Bertram's sexuality is a bit ambiguous from the start, he can more easily adapt appearances to the hyper-masculine worlds of the court and the army; but Paroles can't, and if Lafew's (Emilio Doorgasingh) immediate, violent hatred of him could seem abrupt, having it directed at an effeminate gay man makes it very clear what's going on here. The same is true when he lovingly follows Bertram to war, and the soldiers Dumaine (Kwami Odoom) and Morgan (Adam Wadsworth) hatch a plot to kidnap and humiliate him. His brags about his military prowess here become an awkward attempt to fit in with the soldiers, and his failure to convince them is violently punished.
Although under duress he also reveals military secrets, Paroles' big betrayal of Bertram is that he's written a letter to his new love interest Diana (Georgia-Mae Myers,) warning her that he'll love her and leave her. As it's previously been very clearly implied that Bertram has had sex with Paroles himself, we know he's speaking from experience and offering a genuinely-meant warning. The character's fall from grace is usually shown as harsh but deserved, but as Robinson slinks off to become a beggar with insults scrawled onto his bare chest, he's not just Malvolio, whom his gulling often brings to mind, but also Poor Tom. The execution of his downfall also suggests the bullying has succesfully made him self-loathing, performatively debasing himself: When Lafew offers to shake his hand after pissing and not washing it, Paroles instead sticks the man's fingers in his mouth.
This all also has an effect on how we see Bertram - if he's bisexual and in love with Paroles it gives a whole new slant to why he claims to reject Helen on the excuse of her social status, and the whole play now carries an undertone of queer characters being manipulated by straight people in a position of power. You can apply it to why the Countess is so quick to disregard her son's wishes in favour of Helen's, while Katz, who's got a frightening talent for turning on a sixpence from comedy to brutality*, is perfect casting for the King, who slinks around in his underwear feeling sorry for himself while sick, but reverts straight to capricious dictator once cured.
A lot of Swanamaker designs lately have tended to work against the venue's prettiness, but Rosanna Vize's set complements it, creating whole new panels of artwork to fill every empty space. In the second half these get slightly torn apart so that the wall insulation can be scattered across the stage to turn surface splendour into underlying chaos (it is a bit distracting though to watch the actors navigate slippery obstacles on a shiny floor†.) Ultimately it's the performances that carry the show though, particularly from Robinson whose camp but sensitive portrayal pulls off Walker's high concept.
All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare is booking until the 4th of January at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
*I still vividly recall his Capulet's sudden turn to violent fury against Minnie Gale's Juliet
†I'm just going to go ahead and assume the Globe have fire-proofed the hell out of the fluffy material in a wooden box full of naked flames
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