ALL’s well that starts well as well as ends well, and York International Shakespeare Festival opens today (May 9) with the first production in the hands of York company Riding Lights.

The festival’s resident company, with more than 40 years of Christian, classical and new theatre behind it, will be staging a 90-minute version of All Well’s That Ends Well, a slimline tonic for Shakespeare’s rarely performed comedy.

Playing in traverse (with seating either side of the stage), artistic director Paul Burbridge directs an ensemble cast of five that “brings an ingenious perspective to a surprisingly modern story about love, sex and class”.

“Two teenagers make their way in a dangerous world of pointless conflicts, capricious leaders, outbursts of continental emotion and singing,” says Paul.

“Riding Lights invite you to spend a jolly evening in Friargate Theatre as we streamline All’s Well into a sharp 90 minutes of breathless trips chasing true love, honour, Italian young women and solutions to frankly impossible tasks.”

Nell Baker will play Helena, John Holden-White, King and Clown, Hannah Parker, Countess and Diana, Matthew Rutherford, Parolles, and Daniel Woolley, Bertram, in Burbridge’s festival opener.

“We’re launching the festival at our Friargate home and we’re very happy to be doing that,” says Paul.

“Philip Parr [artistic director of festival co-producers Parrabola] was really encouraging us to do a show of our own here, as well as staging visiting shows. I didn’t know he’d seen the one major Shakespeare play Riding Lights did, a six-hander production of The Winter’s Tale.

“He’d booked the show for the studio at the Theatre Royal, Bath, when he was there, and loved it!”

Now comes an All’s Well That Ends Well that has been cut well. “Unless you grab this play and make it ‘in the moment’, especially for young people, you’re falling further and further away from the pace and jokes you need now. You have to be bold,” reasons Paul. “Now it’s at breakneck speed.”

“So in January we first gathered a group of five actors and a dramaturg, read the play, teased out the characters and worked out how we could do it with a cast of five. By the end of the week, we had a crazy version that we tried out.”

Sean Cavanagh’s set design and the production’s music have since been added, and now Burbridge has his All’s Well That Ends Well, set in southern France and Italy.

“It’s a very jolly but bittersweet production; there’s the comedy, but there’s also lots of people treating people badly, people behaving badly, people being lied to,” says Paul.

“So we thought, ‘Europe? Let’s put it in a cafe, with our inspiration being a beautiful Van Gogh painting of a café under the stars in Arles, Provence – and that cafe’s still there. So the cast are there to play music, serve drinks, tell the story, play the parts.”

Burbridge’s All Well is a story for modern times. “The other thing that we discovered about this play is that it has a very current voice to it, even though it was written in 1603,” he says.

“Shakespeare was reversing the traditional boy-chases-girl story by having a girl-chases-boy story instead.

“You also have women defending themselves against the actions of men, which is absolutely on-topic today in the #MeToo age.”

The editing benefits the play’s impact, suggests Paul. “There are now bits missing that were peripheral to the main plot, and some of the conversations have really gained from being crisped up.

“You can now see the wood for the trees, as they’re just getting on with it.”

Riding Lights Theatre Company in All’s Well That Ends Well, York International Shakespeare Festival, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, tonight (May 9) until May 19, 8pm. Tickets: £10, concessions £8, on 01904 613000 or at ridinglights.org.

There will be a BSL-interpreted performance on Monday, May 13.