ANTONY and CLEOPATRA
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, 21 June 2010
Perhaps it was just as well we went on the longest day because the performance ran for three hours and twenty minutes, even with a few cuts. But tedious it wasn’t for a moment!
The last time I saw the play at Stratford, Antony was drunk – literally – and Cleopatra spent her time in what looked like a shapeless dressing gown. So I was worried that the group were going to be subjected again to a director’s weird ideas or an actor’s incapacity. Wrong on both counts. Granted there was modern dress, but the business suits and Air Force uniforms of the Romans acceptably contrasted with the colourful, often outrageous, fashions and khaki camouflage battledress of the Egyptians. The set was simple so that the action was almost breathlessly continuous, and often excitingly choreographed.
While the ensemble’s portrayal of the characters was always good and sometimes brilliant. Kathryn Hunter’s Cleopatra was tiny, wrinkled, skeletal, and she limped, but the passion and charisma and temper and theatricality were all there, and she rose effortlessly to the tragic regality of her end. Darrell D’Silva’s Antony was also well past his prime, but it was easy to see how he engendered such loyalty, how he had once been a consummate general, and he matched the fire and fury of his great love. Octavius is always a clear contrast to Antony but John Mackay gave him a new dimension. He was an eminently calculating politician who became more and more objectionable as his power grew, though he was allowed displays of anger and a deep affection for his sister.
It was a pity that some jobsworth official would not allow us to board the minibus near the Stage Door and kept the group waiting while the driver toured Stratford’s one-way system to get the bus back outside the theatre after practically all the audience had departed Still, all the other memories are exciting and colourful and entirely pleasurable.
Malcolm Wright
June 2010