Antony and Cleopatra

With a style like a movie thriller, Peter Evans’ Antony and Cleopatra is fast-paced, witty and exciting, and its tight, lean edit makes it fresh and comprehensible to a modern relatively lay audience. Every production of Shakespeare needs to decide to whom to pitch, and here, Evans seems to have aimed at a broader, more youthful group. Purists hanging out to hear each line of the sacred text for the richness of meaning and poetry probably consider it butchery, but I like the way each scene drives forward. The scene of the party on the boat has been sliced and interwoven with a much darker discussion between Menas and Pompey, switching levity and tension to build drama.  That sprawling character list is collapsed down to the bare minimum, even to the extent of wrapping Cleopatra’s second attendant Iras into a female Alexas. All rambling explicatory passages and asides not directly relevant to moving the plot forward are gone, however poetic they might be or important to Shakespeare’s commentary on the end of the Roman Republic.

Catherine McClements brings depth to Cleopatra. While she’s jealous, impetuous and strong, in the presence of Antony, and only then, she allows the façade to slip revealing vulnerability. She can be as vicious as she is loving. Johnny Carr plays a likeable, decadent Antony, and there’s plenty of chemistry between these two. Together, they’re ridiculously self-absorbed. Their faithful companions/servants Enobarbus (Ray Chong Nee) and Charmian (Zindzi Okenyo) are stabilising forces, both striking presences on the stage. Gareth Reeve’s Octavius Caesar is nakedly ambitious, even when his words are conciliatory. Possibly less successful is Lucy Goleby’s Pompey, played as a stereotyped ice queen villainess which doesn’t gel well with the honour shown by Pompey when she refuses to slaughter the triumvirate. That said, the gender change works and it is good to see powerful women portrayed on stage.

There were several features that appear to be trademarks of director Evans: slow, mesmerising movements; a minimalist set; and mood changes signalled by lighting and colours. Evans brings out those places in the script where humour juxtaposes with tragedy, for instance Jo Turner’s clown delivering Cleopatra’s asps is darkly funny. Evans often uses music just before the climax, in this case a desperately sad dance to Nick Cave’s Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow. His structural mood play makes this an exciting ride.

Like the 2104 production The Dream, which had been given a similar extreme edit, this production won’t be for everyone, but I think younger audience will love it.

Cathy Bannister

Photograher: Heidrun Lohr.