Directed by
Michael Attenborough
Designed by
Es Devlin Mark
Antony
Stuart Wilson
Enobarbus
Clive Wood
Scarus
John Killoran
Eros
Israel Aduramo
Decretas
Ross Waiton
Euphronius
Julien Ball
Cleopatra
Sinead Cusack
Charmian
Noma Dumezweni
Iras
Kirsten Parker
Alexas
Simon Nagra
Mardian
Christian McKay
Soothsayer
Trevor Martin
Lady
Cristina Barreiro
Octavius Caesar
Stephen
Campbell-Moore
Lepidus
Clifford Rose
Octavia
Sarah Ball
|
Antony and Cleopatra
by William Shakespeare
Theatre Royal Haymarket
28 August - 21 September 2002
In this most poetic and personal of Shakespeare's plays, in which the drama of an imperial conflict over the government of the world serves as a mere backdrop to passion, one sees the playwright at his most acute in his understanding of woman. Antony is a figure as gripped and swayed by the power of a woman as Othello or any of the other heroes Shakespeare saw as having their tragedy thus explained, from Romeo to Leontes; but there is no other woman in all his plays who – irrespective of royalty, of beauty, of her refined sense of erotic drama, as witness Enobarbus's description of her on her barge – is so completely laid bare in jealousy, in need and longing, in missing her Antony when he is at Rome, in yielding to womanly fear at Actium, yet rising to the heights of human courage in her own monument when she puts the asp to her bosom.
This powerful play needs as its axis a ravishing sexual rapport between Antony and Cleopatra, to explain at once how the presence of the beloved could be preferred to the whole world. In Stuart Wilson and Sinead Cusack this production has an excellent pair of lovers, portraying them in their coupled destiny just as they should be; mature, in the full stretch of their powers, but overwhelmed by the strength and depth of their feelings. Sinead Cusack is perfect for the part, having the beauty and seductiveness required for captivating so great a general and man, yet at the same time manifesting the mercurial quickness required for jealousy and unreasoning anger, embodying the whimsical danger of an absolute monarch whose least irritation can be the death of a servant. This she portrays perfectly, and it makes her the production's chief focus.
She should not be its sole focus, but a single major factor makes her so. This is that Stuart Wilson, for all his handsome, powerful presence on stage – reminiscent of Richard Burton at times, with the same massively contained energy – and for all his obvious excellence as an actor, lacks a voice for the stage. His voice is thin, strained, unprojecting, and it is unfortunate that Cleopatra at the end of the drama describes her dead beloved's voice as being thunder on the battlefield. Is there not something – Alexander technique, laryngeal surgery – that might unleash the voice that ought to come from that great chest, to match the acting power accompanying it? If only this Antony had the voice of Trevor Martin's Soothsayer, a beautiful thing to hear.
In this strong company it is a mark of merit to stand out, but Clive Wood's Enobarbus did, and so did Clifford Rose's Lepidus and Stephen Campbell-Moore's Octavius Caesar. The staging was convincingly intense all the way through, and the contrast between the unbuttoned, boozing Romans from Egypt and the tight-lipped court of Octavius in Rome was both well-perceived by Michael Attenborough, and finely realised on stage.
AC Grayling
|
