 | All's Well That Ends Well |  |
"No legacy is so rich as honesty." Act III, scene v
Written: 1603
OVO ; June 16, 2010 St. Albans, United Kingdom
Director : Imogen de la Bere and Adam Nichols ; Starring :
Reviewed on : 2010-06-19 16:01:07 ; Reviewed by : Wendy Attwell
| OVO have moved around a lot in the last few years, spreading their performances across several St Albans venues, including Trestle Arts Base, the Abbey Theatre, and the Maltings Arts Theatre, as well as a couple of theatres slightly further afield. Last year they moved into the vacated premises of an old book shop, next to St Albans Abbey, hoping to find a permanent home there, but this didn’t work out, and quite frankly the space was far too small for such an exuberant company. Once the play had started the audience were trapped in the theatre, with the only exit a door at the back of the playing space. And although it proved pleasantly intimate for their Christmas concert, having the actors close enough to spit on you during a Pinter play was somewhat unnerving!
Now they seem to have found a space that suits both their needs and their quirkiness, and
that will perhaps allow them to establish a permanent presence in St Albans city centre.
The entrance to their new venue is behind a stationer’s shop, on a tiny back alley called
Pudding Lane. Sadly not wheelchair accessible, the venue consists of several flights of
stairs leading up to the theatre space on the first floor, and then the box office, bar, toilets,
and presumably green room, on the floor above. The theatre itself is a good size,
accommodating around thirty audience members on a raised seating area, and the playing space is large enough for the actors to actually act in. If I have a criticism of the new venue (other than all the stairs) it is the level of noise pollution seeping into the building. I was distracted several times by police sirens, as well as the repetitive beeping of a street crossing situated just outside the building. But this is a small matter, and one with which even the larger London theatres struggle.
So, to the play. All’s Well That Ends Well isn’t an obvious choice for a small theatre company to perform, but as OVO are rapidly making their way through the Shakespeare canon (to date they have also performed Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing), it was only a matter of time before they stepped out with something a little more unusual. And unusual this is!
Set in the 1950s, the action moves between Paris, with its relaxed café culture, and the troop tents of the Algerian War, and combines ‘the philosophical musings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with the smooth tunes of Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Yves Montand’. This setting works rather well, and directors Imogen de la Bere and Adam Nichols have obviously spent some time working on it, in order to make the transition complete and fully formed.
The characters too have been slightly recast. The King of France becomes just ‘King’: a Sartre-like intellectual, dressed in bohemian black, and surrounded by followers who hang on his every word in the hope of some new profundity. His illness, we may assume, arises from his deeply French habits: he awakes to smoke a cigarette, before collapsing back on his daybed in a paroxysm of painful coughing. His demeanour also makes us wonder if his sickness (his ‘nausea’?) is all in his head, either mental or imaginary, and whether the ‘cure’ that Helena administers is merely a placebo effect. David Widdowson plays the role as august with a touch of humour, and as always gives an excellent performance. Sue Dyson as the Countess, stately in royal blue and pearls, manages to be both resolute and motherly at the same time, and her subtle portrayal of a bereft and disappointed parent is highly believable. And the ‘old’ widow of Florence has been transformed into something rather more flamboyant and boisterous, played by Linda Bagaini with unstoppable enthusiasm. The text has been much edited, and some characters cut, but this doesn’t affect the overall feel of the production, which is relaxed and laid-back, much like the Rive Gauche culture that it contains.
The set design, by Alison Wright, is the uncluttered look that works well in a small space. At the back of the stage are draped luxurious fabrics, satin, and lace print, in the blue, white, and red of the French tricolore flag. The fabrics are used is several ways throughout the production, and the rest of the set requirements are kept simple: just a few tables, benches, and chairs, and a suitably sparse amount of props.
But the music is what really sets this production apart. Edith Piaf is probably the singer most associated with France, and her music is something that most of us would recognise. Yves Montand was a French actor and singer, who worked alongside Piaf, as well as being her sometime lover. Jacques Brel is rather less well-known. Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter, who recorded his songs almost entirely in French. His music is known to us only through (sometimes distorted) English translations, and the interpretations of other singers, including Marc Almond, who recorded a whole album of Brel songs. In this production Lucy Crick, who plays Helena, takes on most of the solos. Mournful and haunting, the songs (including La Vie en Rose, and Les feuilles mortes) are sung partly in French and partly in English. Crick is a very capable actress and singer, and with a background in Languages is ideally cast in this role. The rest of the cast, however, are not left out. The men get to sing along to the tune of La Mer (known in English as Beyond the Sea), strike a pose to the French national anthem, and belt out a rather bawdy song that can’t be repeated here! Linda Bagaini and Claire McNulty (Diana) do a fantastic rendition of Jaques Brel’s song Jacky with its strange and slightly risqué lyrics. And even King has his own suitably gloomy sounding melody. Musical Director James Pitchford does an excellent job, and should also be congratulated for dressing to theme, with a stripy jumper and beret!
Attention to detail is important to OVO, and even within the theatre programme there are little in-jokes, such as the café in the show being listed as ‘La Nausée’ - the title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous novel. OVO are good at finding ways of breathing new life into old plays, and over the last few years they have had success with a string of musical Shakespeare productions, themed around different eras. This production, although perhaps less accessible than some of their others, is nonetheless amusing and moving, and something of which OVO can be very proud.
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Henry William Bunbury, 1750-1811
Helena in the Dress of a Pilgrim
Reviews
|  | OVO
June 16, 2010 |  | National Theatre Live
October 1, 2009 |  | The National Theatre
June 9, 2009 |  | Akademietheater
April 1, 2009 |  | Actors' Shakespeare Project
April 22, 2006 |  | Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
April 12, 2000 |  | Royal Shakespeare Company
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