Comedy, romance, trickery: Northeast Stage brings Shakespeare to Grangebel Park

Shakespeare visited Grangebel Park Thursday evening, with a performance of All’s Well That Ends Well by Northeast Stage.

A romance, a comedy, a tale of trickery, All’s Well That Ends Well is often called one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ …because it doesn’t fit neatly into a single category,” says director Nicholas Auletti.

“It contains all the ingredients of a comedy—wit, romance, mistaken identities, and plenty of laughter—yet beneath the humor lies a deeper examination of love, power, forgiveness, and accountability.”

With All’s Well That Ends Well, “Shakespeare somehow wrote a play that can make you laugh one moment and argue with your friends about it in the parking lot afterward,” Auletti says.

“All’s Well That Ends Well” is — and isn’t — a tale of a happy ending, proof that everything worked out in the end, the director says. “But as this cast, crew, and production team explored Shakespeare’s play, we discovered that the title may be asking a more complicated question: Does a happy ending erase everything it took to get there?”

‘Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none’
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act I Scene I

Veronica Spaeth is Helena, the play’s protagonist, the orphan daughter of a famous physician. She is raised in the household of a countess (Rebekah White) and is in love with the countess’ son, Bertram (Jesse Meehan). Helena uses her father’s medicine to cure the ailing King of France (Stephan Scheck). The grateful king allows her to choose a husband from among his wards. Helena, of course, chooses Bertram. He believes Helena to be beneath him and rejects her. After the marriage ceremony, Bertram runs away to Italy to fight in a war. He writes to Helena to tell her he will not acknowledge their marriage until she can prove she wears his heirloom ring and carries his child.

Let the trickery begin!

Northeast Stage produced the show this past week in Port Jefferson Station, Mattituck, Westhampton Beach and Patchogue in addition to Riverhead.

Its run of All’s Well That Ends Well wraps up this weekend in Mitchell Park at 115 Front Street, Greenport, with 7 p.m. performances Saturday and Sunday. In case of rain, the show will go on at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, 768 Main Street, Greenport.

Northeast Stage, a nonprofit theater company, was founded in 1983 by actors Peg Murray and Amie Sponza, to bring classical theatre to the East End, with production of a free Shakespeare in the Park series at the core of its mission.

Sponza, along with Auletti and Mark Heidemann, are co-producers of All’s Well That Ends Well.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr.