ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL


All’s Well That Ends Well might be Shakespeare’s most quoted title, but it’s not often theatergoers get to see the play itself performed live on stage, just one reason A Noise Within’s Spring 2022 season opener is one that no L.A. Bardophile will want to miss.

The always captivating Erika Soto stars as AWTEW heroine Helen opposite ANW legend Deborah Strang as the Countess who has raised her since her father’s untimely death, and a particularly dashing Mark Jude Sullivan is the Countess’s son Bertram, not only the apple of his mother’s eye but the object of a love-struck Helen’s unrequited affections.

Paying no heed to Bertram’s indifference, Helen follows the hunk of her dreams to Paris, where Bertram is about to set up residence with France’s ailing King (the ever redoubtable Bernard K. Addison), though thanks to instructions left to Helen by her deceased physician father, His Majesty’s health is soon restored, whereupon the grateful monarch offers Helen her choice of husbands.

Guess whom she picks, and guess who wants to have nothing to do with his bride on their honeymoon night.

Let the merriment and machinations begin.

Also along for the ride are a couple of Shakespearian fools (a scene-stealing Rafael Goldstein as Paroles and a deliciously ditzy Kodi Jackman in the gender-flipped role of Lavatch), royal advisor Lafeu (the toweringly talented Jeremy Rabb), a couple of Lords named Dumaine (the doubly dashing Kasey Mahaffy and Niek Versteeg), and last but not least (when Helen hatches a plan to get pregnant with Bertam’s child without his knowing he’s having sex with her), virginal country girl Diana (a winsome Nicole Javier), whose place Helen takes in bed with an unsuspecting Bertram because as Shakespeare would have it, all women are unrecognizable in the dark.

With Nike Doukas confidently perched in the director’s chair, All’s Well That Ends Well once again reveals why at age 30 and counting, no other L.A. theater company does Shakespeare more adeptly than A Noise Within.

Doukas and her all-around superb cast (completed by Will Block, Desirée Mee Jung, Gabriela Mendoza, and Trisha Miller in an assortment of roles) make Elizabethan English as accessible as it can possibly be, adding inspired contemporary touches (a line reading here, a reaction there) that might make you forget that All’s Well That Ends Well first got published a whopping 399 years ago.

Angela Balogh Calin’s period costumes look particularly fetching against scenic designer Frederica Nascimento’s stark but effective set as lit by a masterful Ken Booth, with John Ballinger original music composition and sound design, Shelia Dorn’s wig and makeup design, and John M. McElveney’s properties design completing the kind of Grade-A production design package A Noise Within fans have come to expect.

Alan Blumenfeld, Victor Montez, Olivera Perunicic, Rebekah Side, Richy Storrs, Frederick Stuart, and Tania Verafield join cast members Javier and Miller as understudies.

Alyssa Escalante is stage manager and Amber R. Dettmers is assistant stage manager. Hannah Cairo is assistant sound engineer. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is dramaturg.

Opening what may well be A Noise Within’s most contemporary Spring season ever (coming up next are Nilo Cruz’s Anna In Tropics and Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, first performed in 2002 and 1996 respectively), All’s Well That Ends Well is the perfect reminder that ANW’s promise of “Classic Theatre, Modern Magic” has never been truer than it is in 2022.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
February 19, 2022
Photos: Craig Schwartz

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