“All’s Well” Indeed Is By Wes Hessel

“All’s Well” Indeed Is

By Wes Hessel

”All’s Well That Ends Well” by Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier is another great example of their excellent adaptations of the Bard’s work.  Chicago Shakes opted in this production for a minimalist stage, which gives emphasis to the intense acting going on out front.  A few featured central set elements make their own entrance or exit through a center stage lift.  The story of unrequited love and questions of honor are timeless classic themes, built on scene by solid scene.

Alejandra Escalante (Helen) and Dante Jemmott (Bertram) bring their A games to the couple central to the plot of unreturned affection, which is played so well that at first its initial rejection is actually surprising.  Ora Jones’ Countess of Rossillion, mother to Bertram and guardian to Helen, displays finest fortitude mixed with a marvelous mother’s love, which extends to her young charge equally also.  Betram has been tapped by the King of France (regally and realistically portrayed by Francis Guinan) as a new addition to the royal court, so love-torn Helen follows.

In Paris, Helen goes to see the King, believing she can use her famous physician father’s folios to heal the fistula with which the monarch is afflicted.  She is a doctor also, and is successful; in thanks, the restored ruler grants her choice of any of the cortiers as her husband, and she chooses Bertram, who is having nothing to do with it.  He decides to join the French army on the Florentine front, and once again Helen, under guise of pilgrimage, pursues.

The members of the King’s court and military are characterized admirably by Patrick Agada, William Dick, Casey Hoekstra, Joseph Aaron Johnson, Jeff Kurysz, and Pablo David.  On Helen’s arrival in Italy, she encounters three ladies (delightfully depicted by Christiana Clark, Emma Ladji, and Tanya Thai McBride) who become involved.  In amongst all the adventures are the two comic reliefs – Mark Bedard playing Parolles, a clotheshorse coward who shows his true colors, and the always A-1 amusing Elizabeth Ledo as the requisite fool, Lavatch.  Also in the mix are passages of well motivated movement, designed by Stephanie Martinez, which add to the motion and emotion of the play.

Harnessed handily by the direction of Shana Cooper, “All’s Well That Ends Well” is another Chicago Shakes-peer production, indicative of its place as one of the world’s best Shakespearean theaters.  But it won’t end well if you miss this wonderful production before it departs May 29th; for tickets or more information, go to www.chicagoshakes.com.

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