All's Well That Ends Well Reviews

Sophia from Chicago, Illinois

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 2022

All’s well that ends well 2022 By the Chicago Shakespeare theater was an average job of the presentation. Actors seemed miscast and without dimension. Were able to read the lines well but without passion

Bruce Beavis from Chicago, Illinois

DISAPPOINTING, DISJOINTED PRODUCTION

Joyless and leaden. Weakest production I've seen in 20 years at CST last Saturday night and hard to imagine that this was professional theatre. Tepid applause at the end may indicate that my impression is not an outlier. With a few exceptions, most of the cast was unable to either enunciate or project their voices sufficiently to be heard in the first balcony. Combined with speaking approximately 20% too fast without any sense of comic timing, the cast successfully destroyed most of comedy in a very funny play. The costuming was was allegedly going for an Edward-Bohemian look to contrast a formal France with a more freewheeling Italy. It ended up as an ahistorical mishmash of Edwardian, WWII military hobo, and TJ Maxx. Although the play takes place in five scenes at different locales, no indication of this was evident from either staging or scenery. Bizarrely, an inverted prairie did descended and hung from the ceiling part way though and stayed until the end.. The director makes much of her ideas of incorporating movement through dance to craft an "emotional, visceral world of masculinity and femininity, and of war". I was mostly reminded of the old Der Sprockets SNL sketch with Dieter. Seeing a clunker like this production is not altogether bad. It helps sharpens the critical faculties and appreciate excellence when one see's it. I'll be going to the Stratford Festival this summer for Richard II and am tempted to take in their production of All's Well to see the difference.

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