Finally! The wait is over... I can now say I have seen "All's Well That Ends Well"!

It had been one of the few remaining Shakespeare plays that I have neither seen in performance, on film or even bothered to read so I was determined to get to the National Theatre on Wednesday - underground strike or no underground strike.

Despite it being billed as one of his 'problem' plays I had picked the right production to see it for the first time, Marianne Elliott's production is wonderfully accessible, lucid and with a wicked sense of fun mirrored in Rae Smith's delightful fairy-tale setting.

I can see how Elliott arrived at the idea for her production as the plot has it's own internal logic just like a fairy tale - a good deed done by a servant girl results in her being granted a wish by the King to marry whoever she wants and she chooses the prince-like character who is the son of her stepmother-of-sorts. This leads to a challenge being set her before she can have her Happily Ever After.

Helena is a physician's daughter who since his death is part of the Countess of Rossillon's household. She secretly pines for the Countess' son Bertram and is saddened when he leaves to take up a place at court. She seizes her chance when she hears the King is seriously ill and journeying to the palace in a red cloak (nice touch), she cures him with one of her father's old medicines.

The King grants her a wish of choosing any of the men at court as her husband. She eagerly chooses Bertram but there's one small catch... he doesn't want her, even if it displeases the King. With his bragging but cowardly friend Parolles he flees to fight in Italy but not before he informs Helena that he will be hers when she presents to him his father's ring which he wears on his finger and she is pregnant with his child. But Bertram has not counted on the determination of our heroine...

Michelle Terry was a delightful Helena - the character could be played as a bit of a whiney doormat or as a symbol of Downtrodden Woman - but instead she gave us a resourceful heroine who immediately engages your sympathy. Clare Higgins is wonderfully tigerish as the Countess, prowling the stage full of righteous anger at her son's behaviour, and she is matched by Oliver Ford Davies as the King - Owen was particularly taken with his shiny, glittery crown.


Conleth Hill was great fun as the preening, boastful coward Parolles - although a little more venality might have been nice. George Rainsford has the hardest role as Bertram is such a nasty sod but he kept the interest in the character alive. In the supporting roles Michael Thomas had great fun as the King's main councillor and it was great to see the fine Janet Henfrey as an Italian matriarch. Sadly Hasina Haque as Diana, the second woman used and abused by Bertram was a bit too insistent in her line readings and, in this company, gave her performance a whiff of the am-dram.So much of the success of the evening is down to Marianne Elliott. The production is shot through with a style and vision that marries up any of Shakespeare's more ropey plot-twists with a brio and a panache for good story-telling. She is unafraid of the Olivier stage as anyone who has seen WAR HORSE will testify and here she makes full use of it - making the intimate scenes and the larger set pieces equally believable. She even pulls off the trick of combining the two - at the delirious wedding scene at the end with confetti showering down, the revellers posing for group photographs freeze and we are focused on the faces of Helena and Bertram... troubled and full of doubt as to whether this really is Happily Ever After.The design by Rae Smith is inspired - Owen identifying a definite Gormenghast vibe going on - with towering Gothic turrets turning into spindly branches bracketing a sweeping staircase, and all encompassed by a video-screen cyclorama which shows a Grimm landscape, alive with insects, wolves and big hooty owls.

All the way through I was imagining how great a Marianne Elliott/Rae Smith production of Sondheim's INTO THE WOODS would be as it too deals with the darker side of fairy tales, what happens when you get your wish and whether there really can be a Happily Ever After. Make it happen Mr. Hyntner....