ANTONY & CLEOPATRA. To 17 February
London
ANTONY & CLEOPATRA
by William Shakespeare
Novello Theatre To 17 February 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2pm
Audio-described 31 Jan 7.30pm
Captioned 7 Feb 7.30pm
Runs 3hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 950 0940
www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 January
Empirical rather than imperial, showing the human side of power and love.
In another of his fresh, penetrating Shakespeare productions, Gregory Doran shows the humanity in the world’s most powerful lovers: the Queen of Egypt and one of the 2 leaders of imperial Rome, which ruled the whole mapped world.
Neither is young, as the play repeatedly reminds. Cleopatra recalls her distant “Salad days, when I was green in judgment,” Julius Caesar previously “ploughed her and she cropped,” while Antony weighs in during a row with “You were half-blasted ere I knew you”. Harriet Walter shows a woman who is not only not withered with age; her sexiness increases with experience. She’s another of this RSC season’s bright women, her attractiveness an inherent part of her personality.
In the early scenes she’s more than merely flirtatious; her infinite variety exists within a deep love, and she thinks brightly even when reacting emotionally to good news and bad from Rome. All Cleopatra’s responses demonstrate how much this news matters to her. In this first half Walter’s particularly impressive.
Patrick Stewart’s grizzled Antony matches her by contrast. This isn’t (to use the subtitle of Dryden’s later version) a world well lost for him, but an entirely new world opened up to a conqueror, a political husband and soldier. No wonder his soldiers don’t follow him there (Doran provides the sight of Antony chasing playfully after Cleopatra to make the opening reference to his “dotage” unusually pointedly).
This grizzled, newly-impassioned man is contrasted by John Hopkins’ less passionate young Octavius Caesar. But he isn’t the usual pre-determined machine-man, bloodlessly cold. Rather, here’s someone searching his way through a suddenly inexplicably complex situation. This freshness is matched by Ken Bones’ fine Enobarbus, who is as puzzled by it all in his own way.
Usually, RSC London transfers look fine in their West End home. This looks slightly bare, and I suspect seemed more natural on the smaller, open Swan stage in Stratford-upon-Avon (see Rod Dungate’s review of the Stratford opening in reviewsgate’s RSC section). But the contrast between austere male Rome and languid female Egypt is made pointedly simply by two groups of characters at different angles. Both directorial intelligence and fine acting make this an exhilarating production.
Cleopatra: Harriet Walter
Mark Antony: Patrick Stewart
Octavius Caesar: John Hopkins
Lepidus: James Hayes
Sextus Pompeius: Ariyon Bakare
Octavia: Mariah Gale
Enobarbus: Ken Bones
Eros/Soothsayer: Chris Jarman
Philo/Ventidius/Scarus: Joseph Alessi
Demetrius/ Canidius: Paul Barnhill
Silius/ Wounded Soldier/ Proculeius: Rob Carroll
Schoolmaster/Mardian/Seleucus: Ewen Cummins
Decretas/Menecrates: Ravi Aujla
Maecenas: Edmund Kingsley
Agrippa: Keith Osborn
Dolabella: Luke Neal
Thidias: Nick Court
Charmian: Golda Rosheuvel
Iras: Emma Jay Thomas
Alexas/Clown: Julian Bleach
Diomedes/Menas: David Rubin
Handmaid: Allyson Brown
Messenger: Craig Gazey
Director: Gregory Doran
Designer: Stephen Brimson Lewis
Season Stage Designer: Lez Brotherston
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound: Martin Slavin
Composer/Musical Director: Adrian Lee
Movement: Michael Ashcroft
Costumes: Kandis Cook
Company voice work: Alison Bomber, Lyn Darnley
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: Steve Marmion
2007-02-04 12:35:47