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Director Trevor Nunn, who can thread the needle's eye of nuance and possesses a searching eye for detail, has set the play in what the late Kenneth Tynan called "a timeless Edwardia." Helena, a kind of lady-in-waiting to the Countess of Rossillion (Peggy Ashcroft), burns with love for "a bright particular star," the countess's son Bertram. A physician's daughter, Helena follows Bertram to the Court of France and cures the mortally ill King (John Franklyn-Robbins).
As a reward, the ruler promises her the hand of any noble in his court. Helena chooses Bertram. Aghast, the snobbish youth flees to the Florentine wars, leaving word that he will only acknowledge Helena as his wife when she secures the ancestral ring on his ringer and is pregnant with his child. To cut the Gordian knot of the plot, Helena achieves just that.
Apart from the lustrous leading players, each major-minor role is played in stellar fashion. Stephen Moore makes of Bertram's boon companion, Parolles, a pompous, endearing rogue and braggart, a mini-Falstaff. The countess's clown (Geoffrey Hutchings) is Lear's fool, in wit though not in pathos. And Robert Eddison, as adviser to the King, is an elegant paradox, a wise Polonius.
In Japan, when a theater is inaugurated, the stage is blessed in a religious ritual. In England, the players bless the stage by taking it. —By T.E. Kalem