The Stratford Festival has taken on a significant burden in mounting All’s Well That Ends Well and Romeo and Juliet. On the one hand, it must show that All’s Well doesn’t deserve the stigma that comes from being a less-well-known Shakespeare piece (“It’s probably his least popular for a reason…”), and on the other, that Romeo and Juliet can still be made fresh. The Festival has succeeded outstandingly in the first challenge. Director Richard Monette’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well is marked by subtle humour, energy, and touches of charming ingenuity, all of which help keep the story afloat. Beautiful, brilliant Helena conspires to marry the loutish Bertram, with the help of his mother and the King of France, and despite Bertram’s best efforts to escape.
In Monette’s production, the King’s involvement makes the play’s resolution especially poignant. Where the King of Shakespeare’s text is simply a supervisor, issuing commands to his court, Monette’s King (William Hutt) is a figure of riotous deadpan humour. Hutt and Lucy Peacock (Helena) brilliantly animate a relationship that can seem flat on a first reading of the play, creating a friendship one can almost imagine supplanting Helena’s unhealthy obsession with Bertram. Effective revisionist touches like this make All’s Well That Ends Well — well — well worth seeing.
Alas, Romeo and Juliet is a tale of greater woe. Director Miles Potter has put together a very traditional production, complete with tights and heaving bosoms. The real tragedy here is not the timing of Juliet’s beauty sleep, but Potter’s failure to face the Baz Luhrmann challenge. This is the gauntlet thrown down by Romeo+Juliet: How are bridges best built between Shakespeare and Bard-phobic audiences now that we know MTV aesthetics can do justice to great Renaissance drama? Ought we follow Luhrmann down the path of postmodernization? If we don’t, then what? It’s a challenge that faces all Romeo and Juliet productions, and indeed modern Shakespearean drama as a whole.
Here’s the rub: Modernization is a risky route for Stratford to take, as the festival relies heavily on the purses of old ladies who come to see tights and codpieces. The festival can avoid competing with slick productions and simply deliver classic-looking productions made strong by great performances. But no one in Potter’s cast seems ready for that burden.
