Love, resilience, and redemption in ‘All’s Well’

Is he worth winning, though? Ah, there’s the rub. Bertram is a snob and a liar, and often behaves caddishly. That Helena ultimately does win Bertram (thanks to the infamous “bed trick’’) is, at best, an equivocal outcome that can wrap a mocking echo around the play’s title.

Not in the CSC production, however. In staging this dark comedy, one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,’’ director Steven Maler appears to have taken his cue from a line delivered late in “All’s Well’’: “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’’

So this Bertram (Nick Dillenburg) is not, as he is sometimes portrayed, an irredeemable swine. The production, which takes place on an outdoor stage at Boston Common and is set in the late 19th century, opens with an extended, wordless scene in which we see Bertram mourning over the casket of his dead father. When Helena (the excellent Kersti Bryan) tears up at the mention of her own deceased father, Bertram lends her a handkerchief. He shows other signs of tenderness; even when Bertram later takes abrupt leave of Helena, his tone is mostly gentle, not harsh, and he evinces pangs of remorse when he subsequently receives (false) news of her death. Frankly, the absence of a truly dark side to Bertram, the lack of hissable moments, make him blander than he should be and drain some necessary tension from the play.