SOURCE: Smallwood, Robert. “Shakespeare Performances in England, 1997.” Shakespeare Survey 51 (1998): 219-55.

In the following excerpt, Smallwood examines Irina Brook's production of All's Well That Ends Well, finding that the director failed in her attempt to create a setting in which the play's folklore elements could be explored. Smallwood praises Rachel Pickup's energetic and intelligent portrayal of Helena and Emil Marwa's childlike and naïve Bertram.

From a new ‘problem comedy’ to one for which the epithet is of more venerable vintage—but once again to a director bent on a novel and unexpected reading. Irina Brook's production of All's Well That Ends Well at the Oxford Playhouse in the late summer attempted to create a world in which the folk-story origins of the play might operate more freely by presenting it in a pastiche African world. The attempt, though energetic and forceful, was doomed to failure. Rachel Pickup's Helena...