 "...a seldom-performed comedy that comes across as much more accessible — and a lot more fun — than its reputation suggests."
By Elizabeth Maupin
Orlando Sentinel
When an intrepid young woman named Helena sets off on a daunting journey, nobody in the audience at Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s All’s Well That Ends Well can have any doubt who she’s supposed to be.
That’s because she’s dressed in classic Disney convention (in a dirndl and an apron, with a kerchief on her head). She already has danced with a broom. And she’s outfitted for her trip with a basket and a red, hooded cape.
It’s fairy-tale time at Orlando Shakespeare, where director Jim Helsinger has taken a fanciful approach to All’s Well That Ends Well, a seldom-performed comedy that comes across as much more accessible — and a lot more fun — than its reputation suggests. The funny thing is that all the fairy-tale references, as comical as they are, seem like icing on a cake that’s pretty yummy all by itself.
 Helsinger and associate director Thomas Ouellette deliver both the giddiness and the underlying darkness in Shakespeare’s tale of a young woman who goes to great lengths to get a young man who doesn’t deserve her until the end. And it’s that young man, a count named Bertram, who has proved problematic to centuries of All’s Well audiences. Helena, a servant to his mother, loves him madly, but Bertram scorns her. Only if you understand what actor Stafford Clark-Price makes abundantly clear — that the callow Bertram has some growing up to do — can you cheer on Helena’s quest.
At Orlando Shakes, it helps that Helena is played by Marni Penning, who was Beatrice in last season’s Much Ado About Nothing and Portia in The Merchant of Venice and is now also Ophelia in Hamlet. Penning is a wonderfully grounded actress, and if a character she plays wants to win a heartless young man, well, she probably knows what she’s doing.
In fact, the joy that comes from this production comes from a raft of such vivid characters — most as grounded as Penning’s Helena, but a couple in way over their heads. Anne Hering makes a kind and worldly-wise countess, and Johnny Lee Davenport is just as likable as her friend, the wise old Lafeu. Steve Hendrickson brings both fire and glee to the King of France, while Avery Clark and Walter Kmiec make strong impressions in the smallish roles of two playful lords.
Brandon Roberts’ Lavatche fills the role of the Shakespearean jester, all wit and wordplay. And Eric Zivot’s Parolles is the Shakespearean comic villain — this one as foolish and vainglorious as the Malvolio Zivot played in 2005, but with even more bows and ribbons than Malvolio could dream possible. (The whimsical costumes are by Kristina Tollefson.)
Helsinger and his crew have added plenty more laughs to a play that already rests on a couple of typically Shakespearean comic deceptions. I especially liked the delicious expectation of din every time Parolles makes an appearance, even before he himself points out that “every braggart shall be found an ass.”
 But it’s the steadfast love and the courage of young Helena that puts her in league with some of Shakespeare’s most stalwart heroines — and that gives All’s Well That Ends Well the depth and resonance to live on.
"...director, Jim Helsinger, playing at the top of his game...renders a delightful and surprisingly full-blooded version of the Bard's romantic fantasy..."
By Al Krulick
Orlando Weekly
The director’s challenge when mounting a Shakespearean comedy, especially an arcane and wordy one like All’s Well That Ends Well, is to set up the scenes from start to finish, know how and where to ask for laughs, let the actors loose and trust that even if the audience cannot fathom all the archaic references and complex verse, they will still get the gist of the action. And even if it takes a little schtick once in a while to move things along, well, all’s well that ends well.
Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s artistic director, Jim Helsinger, playing at the top of his game, admirably delivers all these comic goods and more in the company’s current production. He renders a delightful and surprisingly full-blooded version of the Bard’s romantic fantasy – a play that, in lesser hands, would have petered out long before its predictably joyous finale.
The plot of All’s Well is all fantastical fairy tale: Helena, a lovely servant girl, has fallen hopelessly in love with an aristrocrat, Bertram, the son of her noble mistress, the Countess of Rousillon. When the object of her affection embarks for Paris to embrace mentorship by the King of France, Helena decides to follow, hoping by hook or crook to win Bertram’s hand in exchange for curing the ailing French king’s “fistula” with medicines left to her by her doctor father. The only hitch in her plans was not foreseeing that Bertram might refuse, but under extreme duress, the marriage is performed if not consummated.
 Prodded by his oily servant, Parolles, unhappy Bertram leaves his shell of a bride and goes off to fight the wars, while Helena and her countess mother-in-law conspire to force a happier ending. And though it does take more than two and a half hours to finally get there, Helsinger and his proficient band of players make the antic journey both funny and moving, combining broad comedy with vibrant and emotionally charged characterizations.
Marni Penning is radiant as Helena; Eric Zivot, perfect as the sly braggart, Parolles; Steve Hendrickson’s portrayal of the king is powerful and poignant; and Brandon Roberts, as Lavatche the clown, and Anne Hering, as the countess, successfully bear much of the heavy comic lifting. Stafford Clark-Price’s Bertram could probably use more rambunctious attitude; the stronger his childish defiance and immature self-regard, the greater his redemption and growth can be by the play’s end.
Photos, top to bottom: Marni Penning as Helena; Steve Hendrickson (left) and Stafford Clark-Price; Julian Elijah Martinez (left), Eric Zivot, Brendan Rogers and Regan McLellan; Alea Figueroa, Lori McCaskill Marni Penning, Brit Cooper Robinson and Katie Skelton |
