Nicholas Auletti isn’t interested in staging Shakespeare the way it’s commonly done. The Northeast Stage director has too much respect for the playwright to treat his work as untouchable.
That concept is at the heart of Northeast Stage’s summer production of All’s Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare’s least-performed and most debated plays. Long considered a “problem play” because of its morally ambiguous characters and controversial plot twists, it presents modern directors with a series of challenges that didn’t exist when it was first performed more than 400 years ago.
“For myself, I think the more popular plays — we’ve done Hamlet, we’ve done Othello, we’ve done Macbeth — I wanted to do sort of a hidden gem,” said Auletti, who has read the entirety of Shakespeare’s collected works. “I always like going on the periphery of anything popular. That’s just my M.O. I think if you dig far enough into somebody’s repertoire, you’ll probably find the most aggressive work, if it’s not too extreme.”
Auletti said he studied All’s Well That Ends Well for a long time, before figuring out how to produce it for a modern audience.
“I said, ‘there’s something of a potential in here,’ and I didn’t know what it was yet. But as we got it on its feet, we flipped it on its head.”
His approach reflects a broader philosophy that has begun to reshape Northeast Stage itself.
Under new leadership, the Greenport-based company aims to become more than another community theater group producing familiar classics. Its productions travel throughout the East End and beyond, rather than remaining tied to a single stage. It is building partnerships with local businesses and arts organizations. And its leadership is considering bilingual productions, lesser-known playwrights and new ways of making theater part of everyday community life.
‘Fascinating’
Few Shakespeare plays challenge audiences quite like All’s Well That Ends Well.
The story follows Helena, the orphaned daughter of a renowned physician, who falls deeply in love with the young nobleman Bertram. After curing the King of France, Helena earns the right to choose her husband and selects Bertram, who wants nothing to do with the marriage. Auletti is intrigued by the complexity of those relationships.
“This play is fascinating to pull apart,” he said.
Rather than beginning rehearsals with blocking and line readings, he immersed the cast in the text itself.
“I did so much text analysis with my actors,” he said. “I literally dedicated a day to each scene of the play. We’d sit down together and talk about every line, every reference, every piece of background. Then I’d give them the frame and say, ‘All right, go play now.'”
‘A unique spin’
That work led him to rethink one of Shakespeare’s most notorious plot devices.
Late in the play comes the infamous “bed trick,” in which Helena secretly takes another woman’s place in bed, prompting Bertram to unwittingly consummate their marriage. The scene has challenged directors for decades, raising questions about deception and consent that resonate far differently today than they did in Elizabethan England.
“We’re doing a unique spin,” he said. “Back in Shakespearean times, this was deemed a comedy because Bertram — and a lot of the male characters — would berate the women, and that would be seen as comedic. I’m sort of flipping it on its head, in the sense that Bertram is now going to be the butt end of the joke.”
Instead of presenting the “bed trick” literally, Auletti and choreographer Jenna Spates transformed it into a stylized dance sequence.
“If you did the bed trick regular… it could rub people the wrong way,” he said. “With this dance… it becomes a little bit more palatable.”
Auletti said he believes the reinterpretation preserves what attracted him to the play in the first place.
“Nobody is purely evil, and nobody is purely good,” he said. “There’s so much depth in the characters.”
‘Think tiny’
The production itself reflects a willingness to adapt. Most touring companies move from one established stage to another. Northeast Stage will move among parks, churches and other venues across Eastern Long Island, forcing the cast to reshape the production for every performance.
“It’s almost like vacationing in somebody else’s home for a little bit and then going away again,” Auletti said.
Preparing for that kind of tour – which includes shows in Westhampton Beach, Patchogue and Riverhead – has meant rethinking the set rehearsal after rehearsal, and adjusting scenes to fit dramatically different performance spaces.
“We’ve been lugging our set with us and practicing, rearranging [and] readapting the fight scenes, because every space is different,” he said. “Sometimes I tell the cast to ‘think tiny’. Sometimes I tell the cast to ‘think bigger’, depending on the limitations of the space.”
Outdoor performances introduce challenges that no rehearsal room can duplicate.
“An outdoor production, you feel the elements around you,” Auletti said. “Shakespeare has so much natural imagery within the play — flowers, the gods — you sort of hearken those gods to come down and play with you a little bit as an actor.”
The unpredictability becomes part of the experience.
“Theater is essentially ephemeral, and every single performance is different,” Auletti said. “Every time somebody comes to see a show, there are slight nuances here and there. Of course, you want consistency, but that’s what makes theater theater.”
‘That lovely framing work’
As much as Auletti enjoys dissecting Shakespeare, he talks just as enthusiastically about Northeast Stage’s future.
The company’s “All’s Well in Greenport” initiative is encouraging local businesses to embrace the play through themed drinks, promotional displays and collaborations intended to make the village itself feel like part of the theatrical experience.
“We needed to focus in on our home base, the place we love the most,” Auletti said. “We wanted to reestablish our connections with the community, making sure we’re supporting our neighbors, and supporting Greenport to be a place of cultural maturity, cultural progressiveness … the place to be for theater.”
The company is also looking beyond Shakespeare.
Auletti hopes Northeast Stage will increasingly produce overlooked contemporary playwrights, explore bilingual productions and work more closely with the North Fork Community Theatre and the North Fork Arts Center to create what he describes as a vibrant theater circuit across the North Fork.
“We don’t have to do Oklahoma! 20 times,” he said. “There are more things in the world. We can do plays about Afghanistan, Mexico, South Africa… do a little more experimental theater and then balance it out with a crowd pleaser.”
Auletti see theater as one of the few places where difficult conversations can still happen productively.
“There is such division right now. Art – and theater – is one of the few places where people can have civil discourse… and talk about, ‘Oh, I didn’t like that.’ But why didn’t you like that?
“Art does that lovely framing work for society.”