Review: ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL at A Noise Within

The pandemic-induced cultural shutdown has caused southland playgoers to miss out on a lot of theatrical favorites over the past two and a half years. With the opening of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, Pasadena's A Noise Within - the region's self-described "Home of the Classics" - finally returns with something the company has done so well for so many years: the works of William Shakespeare.

I was slightly surprised that ANW waited until the second half of its 2021-2022 reopened season to bring back the Bard (with no disrespect intended, given the company's first-rate staging of August Wilson's SEVEN GUITARS). Also, the choice of a lesser-known and somewhat problematic comedy like ALL'S WELL - even by a company as adventurous as this one - was an interesting one.

All that said, the company's season's theme is "They Shattered the Chrysalis," and ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL undeniably has at its center, a butterfly-in-waiting and a marvelous performer waiting to take her on. From leading lady Erika Soto to company stalwart Deborah Strang, Nike Doukas's solidly entertaining production of ALL'S WELL boasts a particularly strong core of women who anchor this effort with great skill. In a play about feckless, silly or ineffective men, how very fitting it is that the women should take command. Doukas's production can't solve the play's central problem, but she a congenial ride, nonetheless.

Soto plays Helen, the orphaned daughter of a French doctor and ward to the Countess of Rosillion whose medical prowess give her the opportunity to advance her station. The steps she takes to make this happen, alas, cause a big problem and sets the plot of ALL'S WELL in motion. (Semi Spoiler alert: Whether or not you know the play, that title is a pretty solid giveaway that the curtain won't fall on a stage littered with corpses.)

But let's get back to Helen. A wallflower if ever flower met wall, Helen is well-spoken but unassuming until she gets into the court of France and wagers her life that she possesses the medicinal prowess to cure the ailing King (played by Bernard K Addison). Later in the play, when things go south, Helen has the wherewithal to to set things right. She does so by roping other women into her machinations and - take that, Rosalind and Portia! - without once having to disguise herself as a boy. Not bad for a waif dismissed as "a poor physician's daughter."

Trouble is, the person doing the sneering and dismissing is Bertram, Count of Rosillion (Mark Jude Sullivan), the man with whom Helen is in desperately love. Soto twists her hands nervously whenever Sullivan's Bertram is nearby, accidentally collides with him and gazes at him with the saddest of eyes. When he departs, she moves to the window, watching him leave, "'Twere all one /That I should love a bright particular star/And think to wed it, he is so above me." It's a lovely, character-establishing monolog and Soto delivers it gracefully and segues into witty banter with Paroles (Rafael Goldstein), one of Bertram's fellow soldiers about whom more will be written presently.

By healing the King, Helen gets her pick of a husband. After reviewing an array of noblemen, she selects a none-too-pleased Bertram. We have already witnessed the friendly affection that Bertram has for Helen, but, entitled lout that he is, he plays the class card, declaring that she is too far below him in rank. (Oh, and also, he should be allowed to choose a wife for himself.) Even after the King says he himself can raise Helen's social stock, Bertram states "I cannot love her." So the King does what kings do: he forces the marriage, prompting the petulant Bertram to essentially abandon his new wife, and informing poor Helen that he will recognize her only if a series of impossible demands are met.

Therein likes a rub of this play; what are we to make of a worthy catch like Helen (who Soto infuses with nothing but likeability) pining for a man who not only can't love her, but treats her shabbily? At ANW, Sullivan gives Bertram a certain diffident charisma and he brings out the character's better nature when Bertram is among his fellow soldiers. That the character is still once and always a cad, is not a dramatic dealbreaker since the play gives Bertram and Helen limited stage time together other than their initial rift and (all will end well, remember) their resolution.

Doukas has stacked the play's female lineup with plenty of heavy-hitters. Strang radiates maternal warmth and a certain regalness as Bertram's better-valued mother, the Countess of Rosillion. Her interplay with her clown/servant Lavatch (Kodi Jackman, playing the character as a woman) has some real snap. Later in the play, when the action shifts to Italy, Nicole Javier gives the production some fortitude and backbone as Diana, an innkeeper's daughter pursued by Bertram and ultimately co-opted by Helen to help set things right.

Among the men, Goldstein's Paroles - while unquestionably a yellow-bellied coward - isn't the over-the-top fop that the character often becomes. The man loves his scarves and plumes (tastefully rendered by costume designer Angela Balogh Calin), but Goldstein gives him a soul and a conscience. One almost pities poor Paroles every time the King's advisor Lafeau (an excellent Jeremy Rabb) takes him down a few pegs.

Apart from the humiliation of Paroles and - to a lesser extent - Bertram's courting of Diana - ALL'S WELL doesn't contain a lot of side plots to detract from the Helen-Bertram journey. Doukas's production keeps the action focused and energetically-paced, taking us from lovesick to triumph in just over two hours. Our guide on that journey is Erika Soto, a Noise Within company member whose work with one of Shakespeare's lesser-seen heroines makes all not just well, but excellent.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL plays through March 6 at A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. (626) 356-3121, www.anoisewithin.org.

Photo of (l-r) Deborah Strang and Erika Soto by Craig Schwartz.