Summary 
Large-scale production on a massive stage overwhelms the intimate little story of a diminutive and intellectual orphan pursuing romantic love with a handsome young noble. A mousy Helen, so soft-spoken as to be nearly inaudible, grows in both confidence and determination, physically healing a king, overcoming a public rejection, traveling the world in disguise, and capturing the heart of her beloved. An unconvincing and awkward conclusion, a fairy tale ending rather than a realistic result of perseverance.
Design
Directed by Mary Zimmerman. Set by Riccardo Hernandez. Lights by T.J. Gerckens. Costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins. Sound by Michael Bodeen. Original music by Michael Bodeen and Miriam Sturm.
Cast
Mary Ann Thebus (Countess of Rossillion), Bruno Campos (Bertram), Del Close (Lafeu), Jerry Saslow (Lavache), Julia Gibson (Helen), Raymond Fox (Rynaldo), John Ellison Conlee (Parolles), Howard Witt (King of France), Lee Sellars (First Lord Dumaine), Marc Vann (Second Lord Dumaine), Cheryl Lynn Bruce (Widow), Meredith Zinner (Diana), Shannon Branham (Mariana).
Analysis
Mary Zimmerman makes her Shakespearean directorial debut with All's Well That Ends Well at the Goodman Theatre, a grandiose treatment of the intimate problem comedy. Zimmerman's lavish three-hour production is staged with a two-story series of windowed rooms and sliding, screen-like panels. Multiple scenic backdrops are visible upstage through the windows, giving a sense of confinement and limitation to the main character's environment that is critical to Zimmerman's conception. At the conclusion - following Helen's gritty perseverance - the upstage panorama is finally revealed to her as a lush garden beneath an azure sky, a metaphorical achievement and appropriate heroine's reward fitting the unequivocally happy ending.
Julia Gibson's Helen - tiny, demure and soft-spoken - is physically plain, with her blonde hair pulled back into a bun, a simple dress, and wire-rimmed glasses. Gibson plays Helen - an orphaned ward within the Rossillion household in love with a nobleman from a distance - initially as an intellectual (she duels the Countess at a game of chess) and a mousy introvert. Transformed by her feelings for Bertram, Helen becomes increasingly energetic and determined. Her Bertram, played not just by a movie star but by a Brazilian movie star, features smoldering good looks, with dark wavy hair and dark eyes, wearing a billowy white shirt beneath a black velvet vest. Helen swoons over him in the opening scene - after a longing gaze out of one of the windows - watching from above while Bertram and his mother, the Countess of Rossillion, share an embrace and a kiss downstage below. The mother and son are silhouetted in their emotional bond - the depths of their intimacy hinted at disturbingly - and it becomes apparent that one of Helen's challenges will be to win the approval of the Countess.
Passionate love for someone of a higher social class - unrequited and from afar - conjures echoes from Shakespeare's sonnets, published at about the same time that All's Well That Ends Well was composed. Gibson's plucky Helen, however, is no adorer from a distance, and she has the courage to take action and, when events confound her, the determination and guile to devise solutions. Zimmerman's heroine, a prim young woman of low social rank in an intimidatingly large and male-centered Europe, pointedly pursues her dream, determines her own place in society, and achieves her goal: a handsome and apparently loving husband. That she does so through a series of deceptions - including disguising herself as another lover in order to be impregnated by Bertram - is not, or is at least beyond, Zimmerman's point: self-determination is by its nature heroic, the ends certainly justifying the means. Onstage, however, the happy conclusion plays poorly, a contrived and unrealistic fantasy that a man who does return feelings of passionate love would suddenly change both his mind and his heart.
Bruno Campos portrays Bertram with a brooding Latin mystique and a fine sense of aristocracy. A vital youth on the verge of becoming a man of the world, Campos' Bertram is far from cynical or mean-spirited, but like Helen, focused on the daunting world before him. During the selection scene, he relaxes with disinterest at the side of the stage, and once chosen for marriage, he shows shock and quite naturally refuses: marriage with a commoner - and someone he considers a sister - certainly not a part of his grand life plan. Earlier, during a lengthy and intricate court dance sequence featuring several graceful changes of partners, Bertram dances only briefly with Helen and does not end the dance at her side. Gibson's Helen seems disturbed; Campos' Bertram fails to even notice.
Zimmerman sets and costumes the comic drama in an undetermined era, probably the early to mid seventeenth century, though some of the military uniforms appear to be of a later European era. Supporting characters are only slightly fleshed out, and generally only in visual terms - Lavache in modern grunge-style clothes appearing like Stan Laurel; the outrageous Parolles a mincing fop - with the exception of the King of France: before his unlikely cure by Helena, he speaks in a gravel-voiced growl and fusses in white cap and hospital gown and robe, wearing a full snowy white beard. The King appears charmed by the forthright Helen, is angrily defensive of her during the selection scene, and glowingly pronounces the titular "all yet seems well" as the production nears its conclusion.
Zimmerman's duplexed set serves Helena's departure scene well, as she packs and prepares for Florence above while the Countess reads her letter (and deceit regarding a journey to Spain) below. Helen's courage and confidence increase, and Gibson's presentation features a stronger projection and a firmer physical bearing. Her soliloquy shows flashes of previously uncharacteristic anger, and her journey to a foreign land disguised as a pilgrim parallels the indominatable female spirits from Shakespeare's earlier plays, namely Rosalind exiled to the Forest of Arden or Viola shipwrecked in Illyria. Gibson's green dress and studious demeanor contrast with her colorful Italian peers - including the flirtatious Diana - who appear to be giggling and immature young simpletons. Once enlisted by the earnest Helen, Diana teasingly blindfolds Bertram and Helen takes her place in bed, where she also accepts Bertram's prized ring.
The concluding scenes move briskly but ring hollow, the happiness of the conclusion wholly unconvincing. Helen has fully blossomed - her hair down, her glasses gone, her cleavage visible within a velvet gown - and Bertram appears to be convinced of her love when confronted with her wearing of his ring and pregnancy with his child. He romantically kneels before her in a rather difficult to believe change of heart, and thrilled, Helen kneels along with him. The droll Lafeu comments perfectly - "mine eyes smell onions" - and the epilogue is spoken by the entire cast with cheerful earnestness downstage: "your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts." The uneasy happy ending aside, Zimmerman's production, while handsomely mounted, seems over-staged, with the forced ending and lavish production values within the Goodman space - including the finally fully-revealed garden and sky panorama at the end - overwhelming a small but intimate story about a heroic young woman.