It is almost as inevitable as the pristine South Quad snow becoming a slushy dirty mess. Yes, once again, Actors from the London Stage (add English accent here) have waged a British invasion on the stage of Washington Hall.

Landing on the Notre Dame campus for the second time in four years (previously with "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), these acting Brits have opened up the same bag of tricks — a white-taped outline on the stage, a few simple chairs for a set, very minimal costuming and five very British accents.

This year, the white-taped acting space contains five actors playing out "All's Well that Ends Well," one of Shakespeare's lesser known comedies. Telling the story of misplaced love complicated by the struggles of class and court, this play continued the staging and acting precedents laid by the troupe after its last visit.

In order to cover the needs of the script and to play the dozen or so characters involved in the play, the five actors quite deftly executed some fancy footwork and quick costume changes. One actress morphed from a conscientious mother to a less caring guard by merely buttoning up a flap of her frock.

While for the well-read Shakespearean scholar this very theatrical and witty staging technique could be exciting, these lightning fast shifts of characters were disorienting, thereby causing the plot to become murky.

While many in attendance were Core class students who had priorly read the play, much of the audience had no such prior knowledge of the plot. Despite a short synopsis being printed in the program, the theatrical convention of character-shifting and lack of physical placement through sets left much of the facts of the story cloudy.

This was extremely unfortunate, for this confusion for the audience created a rift between the actors and those in attendance. Since many in the audience were unable to decipher the plot and to discover whom exactly the actors were playing, there was a loss of theatrical excitement in some scenes.

Part of this stagnancy of energy could be attributed to a unique dynamic caused by the utter simplicity of the production. Watching the actors play characters inside the taped outline and prepare as actors in full view out of it is in a way exciting, yet this lack of spectacle robs the audience in some way of seeing a fully staged work of theater.

A program note states that this simplicity is the very goal of the troupe, not in any way robbing the audience of personal interpretation sometimes limited by director or designer. Yet it seems that this unique interpretation by director or designer is exactly what many audience members come to the theater to see.

As relayed by the actors in a post-show question and answer session, "All's Well that Ends Well" is certainly not the best-written or most action-packed of the Bard's works. For that reason, it would seem fitting to either inject this work with an energetic thematic choice or maybe simply choose another work for this simple format.

Despite the shortcomings of the production as a whole, the most admirable aspect of the play was the extremely strong performances of the five actors. Despite what they personally suggested was not the best written of all Shakespeare works, these actors shifted characters instantaneously and effortlessly.

One of the most impressive aspects of these actors was their ability to change physical carriage to indicate to the audience that the actor was portraying another character. One actor moved from a regal lord to a foppish clown by crinking his back and walking with a limp to produce an astounding comic turn.

Despite what could be interpreted as a convoluted plot and an odd presentational technique, the extraordinary talent of the performers is reason enough to spend three hours questioning the truth of the title. While many audience members found the staging to be confusing, others left the theater with a new appreciation for five actors and a lesser-known work of Shakespeare.

If at the end of the show, one is able to truly decipher the intricacies of the story and the characters, able to relish in the energy of the performers and able to look past that white border on the stage, it will be a well-spent three hours. It seems that Shakespeare actually knew what he was talking about. All is well that ends well.

• London upstages ND
  
• 'All's Well That Ends Well?' — Depends on who you ask