Review: Anthony and Cleopatra. The RSC. Stratford.

I was reminded of modern celebrity culture while watching the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest production of Antony and Cleopatra; after all, the two title characters surely make the tragic mistake of believing their own hype.

This was an extremely well-cast production, with both Josette Simon, as Cleopatra, and Antony Byrne, as Mark Antony intensely aware, almost intuitively aware, of their characters' motivations and failings.

Both Antony and Cleopatra are doomed because they are middle-aged icons in a world that is turning, to leave them behind in the dark.

Josette Simon was, at times, almost chilling as Cleopatra: because she portrayed the last Queen of Egypt as a cross between an eternal child and a living symbol of her ancient nation - expecting respect with the raising of one eyebrow. There was an un-nerving sense that she was in no way predictable: that she might strike out herself, like a snake, should anyone dare to forget her time-hallowed status as Pharoah. Her full nudity towards the close of the play was a little shocking, but in keeping with this quality of unpredictability. Simon is a name to conjure with, because her stage presence is so dominant.

Without this stage presence, the grisled old warrior Enobarbus, played admirably by Andrew Woodall, could not have been so star-struck. Woodall gave one of the best soliloquies in the play, describing the first time be encountered Cleopatra. He did not speak as an eloquent man, for whom words might come easy, but as a man who was struggling to express his memories, complete with pauses and hesitations.

He stares into space and remembers - "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,

Burn'd on the water..." This was a masterstroke.

Woodall's Enobarbus is so completely the old soldier - the man of the world, that his enchantment with Cleopatra helps to enchant the audience too. He sees the childishness in Cleopatra, telling how "I saw her once/ Hop forty paces through the public street....", but it is also Enobarbus who gives the famous speech, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety...." He is star-struck, and with Antony too; but he betrays them both for the rising star of Octavius Caesar, played admirably by Ben Allen as an over-ripe public schoolboy who wants to be seen as benevolent while planning stratagems and betrayal.

Mark Antony, as portrayed by Antony Byrne, is a man who believes that past triumphs will be armour enough against all challenges. Byrne's Antony is a man in a mid-life crisis who simply cannot understand why he must lose in the end. His death scene, and Cleopatra's death scene, were both intensely moving.

This was not, however, a faultless production. Its pace was a little too leisurely and the set was uninspiring. The Egypt as presented was a little too off the peg, and it did not really reflect the astonishing cultural melting pot that Egypt must have been by then. This said, the acting and the directions were faultless, and this production lodges in the mind. It is not easily forgotten.

Antony and Cleopatra runs at the RSC in Stratford until September 7.

By Gary Bills-Geddes.