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Love story of the Nile still rings true
SHAKESPEARE: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Novello Theatre
PATRICK Stewart plays a commanding Marc Antony in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s magnificent production.
You cannot fault the casting. Whether it was as Captain Picard in Star Trek, the captain of the Pequod in Moby-Dick, or as X-Men leader Professor X in that dismal Hollywood blockbuster – no one takes command better than Stewart.
The classically trained 66-year-old will play Shakespeare’s omnipotent, dark arts’ master Prospero in The Tempest come February.
Antony and Cleopatra picks up where Julius Caesar leaves off, completing Shakespeare’s rough-guide to the Roman civil war and the final destruction of the republic.
Antony locks egos with Octavius in a battle for political supremacy but it is Antony’s and Cleopatra’s love and sexual desire that occupies centre stage.
Christopher Lee’s niece Harriet Walter balances wallowing insecurity with pride as a playful, witty Cleopatra.
Few passages in Shakespeare have more of that local truth of imagination and character than when the lovesick Queen sits wondering what her departed Antony is doing: “He’s speaking now, or murmuring – where’s my serpent of old Nile?”
But when the fearful messenger reports Antony has married Caesar’s sister Octavia she lets loose a gaze that would make Isis and the crocodile tremble.
The RSC has staged the story back in Rome, an unfashionable move given the rise of modern dress productions.
It felt a little daring, almost taboo, to see actors play the parts they would have played in Shakespeare’s day. A very un-PC soothsayer – a voodoo-doctor complete with white war-stripes, who proclaimed his prophecy in primitive tongues – had a few squirming in their seats.
But for all their best efforts the RSC could not escape the 21st century society entirely.
As Cleopatra let the asp slither across her breast, recalling Antony’s ‘delights’, a mobile phone rang – timed to imperfection.
Congratulations to the inspired work of stage-designer Lez Brotherston, a celebrity in his own field I gather. Brotherston’s set was alive with imagination.
Recommended.
Until 17 Feb
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