A Grimm Fairytale

All’s Well That Ends Well could sum up the whole day really. We had intended a sunny picnic on the green by the London Eye, but ended up sheltering from torrential rain in the National Theatre café and Pizza Express before heading back to the Olivier for Marianne Elliott’s latest take on Shakespeare.

Fairytale is the big theme and tag line for this production and, although not subtle, the references are clever and well placed, from the heavy red cloak that our heroine puts on when she goes out into the big bad world to the silhouetted fairytale tableaux that introduced the scenes, which reminded me for some reason of French storybooks. The first problem with this play is that the first half is all scene setting, and I did get a bit fed up waiting for the main event, however beautifully the set-up was done. The second half was packed with incident though, all well acted and cleverly staged with not a dull moment. Brilliant stuff. But then came the ending. Of course we did get the fairytale, in that the hard to capture prince was finally captured. The trouble was that by the end of the story marrying off this clever and resourceful woman to such a twit who had failed to recognise her merits seemed more like a tragedy. Suddenly the title felt less like a statement and more like a question. So my applause was for the beautifully spun fairytale with a perfect happy ending, but also for the way in which the nasty realities of life were all so subtly exposed and the fantasy bubble was pricked.