Aug.3, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.
Antony and Cleopatria playing for the rest of the summer at Shakespeare and Company has much going for it. Although one of the great tragedies and one that tends to be rarely produced, it is one of the most poetic with only some 70 prose lines among its well over 3000 blank verse ones, and those lines, like ones in “Lear” and “Hamlet,” contain some of Shakespeare’s greatest ones where the rhyme of early plays is replaced by lines of sweeping emotion.
(L-R) Nigel Gore (Marc Antony),Tina Packer (Cleopatra), Molly Wright Stuart (Iras), Christianna Nelson (Charmian)
The current production has wisely cut this over-long play, giving it a running time of only three hours including intermission. But also wisely has omitted none of the immortal lines.
The production, under Michael Hammond’s skillful and creative direction, has introduced stylized elements, sometimes almost danced, that speed up the battle scenes, and in the case of the final triumphal moment at the play’s ending that unites Antony and Cleo in love, creating a stage picture and moment that is marvelous in its beauty and symbolism uniting theme, character and staging for an absolutely surprising and smashing ending.
The plot of this, rather unwieldy play written with some 44 scenes shifting back and forth and settings covering the whole vast world of the time—Rome, Athens, Egypt and the seas linking them, begins with Caesar dead and his heir Octavius creating a triumvirate that includes Antony and Lepidus in fighting Pompey.
However, although he has a Roman wife, Fulvia, Antony has tasted the nectar of Cleopatra’s love in Egypt which pulls him back to her. And once Fulvia dies, he easily forgets her, content in the arms of Egypt.
But political ties are strong and he is persuaded by Octavius back to Rome to reforge the alliance by a marriage to Octavius’ sister, Octavia. This is one of his disastrous moves that will temporarily infuriate Cleopatra, but more vitally smash his compact with the triumvirate when he abandons his wife for a return to Cleo’s arms.
Thus Antony and Octavius become enemies and fight, not on the land where Antony might have had a chance to win, but on the sea where even though Cleopatra’s fleet joins his (only to fly at an inopportune moment), the battles (there is a second one) are lost.
Finally utterly defeated and in Egypt, Antony seeks death, a botched job, but redeemed in his love, he can at last die in the arms of the Cleopatra, who follows him swiftly into the dark region.
In the end, Antony’s great love has proved stronger than his political ambitions. Dryden (in the classical period, trying to tame this vast play’s scenes and theme) entitled his version “All For Love.”
In Cleopatra, Shakespeare has created a great role demanding many moods and Tina Packer evokes all of them. The “infinite variety” that Shakespeare says she possess is all there. She is fickle, vain, spoiled, cowardly, cunning, bewitching, loving, jealous, mercurial and the serpent of the Nile.
She is also, especially in the final scene of the play, a woman capable of such deep love for Antony that she follows him gladly into death, but as the queen she knows herself to be, calling for her crown and jewels and flowing robes so she can embrace him regally as he deserves, preferring the truth of her love to be stronger than the truths of a world well lost.
Antony has said, “I’ll make Death love me.” Cleopatra bravely and defiantly says, “The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch which hurts and is desired” as she presses the asp to her breast. Packer’s voice, her impeccable delivery of the wide range of her poetic lines is magnificent, the nuances varied subtly and movingly.
Nigel Gore as Antony plays greatly and with great variety striding the battle scenes in fiery defiance, capable of playful (and passionate) love scenes with Cleopatra, and angry ones as well. He is torn back and forth across the political scene and the personal emotional one and plays each to the hilt. A bravura performance.
Enobarbus (Walton Wilson) gets the magnificent “barge she sat on” lines and speaks them beautifully, though one could wish some of the stylization applied elsewhere in the play could have introduced at least swaying perfumed sails behind him as he spoke to soften even more poetically a moment blurred a little by his large physical, unpoetic presence and his otherwise lusty performance.
Among those in the vast doubling roles that have reduced Shakespeare’s enormous cast demands to a dozen actors, all were capable and appealing. Standouts for me were Craig Baldwin as Octavious, commanding and ruthless politically but gentle, protective and winning in his real devotion to his sister Octavia, (Molly Wright Stuart) a touching abandoned wife.
Robert Briggs was an able Lepidus; Christinanna Helson, a solicitous Charmain. Pompey (Ryan Winkles) enlivened the first act with a drunken party. And in a small role Michael Soloman brought a fine voice and presence to the role of Agrippa.
As produced the second act is better than the first, more momentum, more marvelously staged scenes. Shakespeare plays always present a problem in the need for at least one intermission, which ideally would come at the end of the third act. However, the danger of an overly long first act for a modern day restless audience often leads to a cutting within the act, breaking the play at an awkward place.
(This has been a problem this summer with theatres trying to fit the old-fashioned three-act, two-intermission play into the one intermission pattern as well. Each director has had to cope with it, and it can be a harder problem with Shakespeare’s plays where Elizabethan audiences evidently had more staying power.)
In Antony and Cleopatra, the production despite a bawdy, playful and coy opening love scene that got it off to a fine start, did not gain real momentum until Packer’s absolutely marvelous playing of the “jealousy of Octavia scene” brought the audience to the level of spontaneous clapping. From then on, the play really took off, never flagging and gaining in intensity as it went along to end in triumph.
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Tags: 3 Comments
3 responses so far ↓
A fine production greatly marred by the visual image of a 60+, less than fit, woman playing a very sensual role. Unfortunately, even closing one’s eyes did help as what should have been a beautiful, young, and sensual voice had more of the character of an oder crone.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Bob. Ms. Packer, despite her considerable acting abilities, could not effectively transcend the corporeal frame. I would say the same thing for Nigel Gore. This could have been set in a geriatric home and been more believable.
Oh get over it! Tina Packer is fantastic in the role– and cleopatra herself was NOT in her “salad days.” This is a great production and Packer and Gore use their maturity with great dramatic power.