[In the following excerpted review, Jackson comments on the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Antony and Cleopatra at Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Steven Pimlott. In particular, Jackson finds Frances de la Tour's performance of Cleopatra outstanding, and notes that Alan Bates's Antony, while amiable, is somewhat unheroic.]

In my previous report on Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon I wondered more in sorrow than in anger what kind of artistic policy the RSC might lay claim to.¹ Whether or not in the course of the “Summer Festival Season” the company found a policy, they certainly acquired a stage, which may amount to the same thing. The 1500-seat proscenium-arch main house, with whose architecture directors and designers have struggled since it opened in 1932, was remodeled under the direction of the company's resident designer, Anthony Rowe. For the summer season the company installed a deep, elliptical platform stage, on which the principal action of each play was performed. The space upstage of the proscenium arch was relegated to providing background images or (for long stretches of some of the season's plays) simply closed off from view. In order to make the actors visible to spectators at the back of the topmost level, the new platform was higher than in previous attempts to bring the stage forward (such as that of the 1976 season). Consequently, the front two rows of stalls on either side of it became “restricted-view” seats, and the performers' horizontal sight line was slightly above the heads of the audience in the middle and rear stall seats.

But two other elements of the past twelve months' work in Stratford were definitely signs of policy: an increased attention to clarity of speech (reinforced by company voice classes) and the designation of the main season, from March to September, as a “summer festival.” The voice work—together with the remodeled stage—addressed directly some criticisms made in recent years by giving speech and action priority over scenic display. …

For Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Steven Pimlott with designs by Yolanda Sonnabend, the forestage was backed by three tall mirrors that could be instantly rendered transparent to reveal a background of gold geometric shapes against a dark backdrop. By means of these mirrors a character in Alexandria could be “present” at a scene in Rome and vice-versa. On the right and left, stacked against the proscenium arch, were Egyptian and Roman accoutrements of the kind normally associated with the play: standards and weapons inscribed with the empire's “S.P.Q.R.”, feather fans, the odd ankh. In defiance of this reminder of performance traditions, there was no standard-wielding, Aïda-style marching or fanning in this production. The milieu at first suggested an Alexandrian nightclub in the middle of the twentieth century, with cocktail glasses and cigarettes. Philo delivered his opening speech directly to the audience from the front of the stage (Demetrius did not appear), while upstage to the audience's right a group of courtiers huddled round what seemed to be a chaise longue. On “Behold and see” the group parted to reveal Antony and Cleopatra. At some early performances they were unequivocally in the last stages of cunnilingus, and later in the run they were discovered in a more decorous postcoital position, he with his head in her lap. Either way, the director was announcing a no-holds-barred version of court life in Alexandria, which suited the fearlessness of Frances de la Tour's Cleopatra. De la Tour is not conventionally good-looking but has a commanding stature, a strong, melodious contralto voice, and a winning quality of emotional openness. Conventions of Egyptian glamour were not going to be served in this rawly passionate performance, which ignored no chance for comedy and made no bones about the queen's desire for physical and emotional satisfaction. In her treatment of both the departing Antony and of the hapless messenger who reports on Antony's marriage she was formidable and quick-witted, turning on a sixpence from nostalgia to anger or from humor to indignation. With Thidias (in 3.13) her condescension could not conceal her sense of the need to survive. Her raising of Antony to the monument (in fact he was pulled across the stage and placed in a chair) was allowed an element of the ridiculous, but the lament after his death was heartrending.

In the final scene, for which the geometric lumber-room upstage was cleared out to reveal the brick wall at the rear, Cleopatra was costumed in a simple shift. The betrayal of her by her steward was by now an irrelevance, rather than any kind of victory for the smoothly magnanimous Caesar. After Caesar's departure she prepared for death. In a long, silent ritual she made up her face before donning the robe that presented her in formal grandeur for the first time. According to a convention established earlier in the production, after her “death” she discarded a garment and walked off. De la Tour did this simply and without fussing over the arrangement of her shift so that often her breasts were exposed, and in some later performances she left the stage completely naked.

The principal male role in this play raises interesting questions about the relationship between theatrical and other kinds of heroism. An Antony needs to command whatever stage he has been put on. Alan Bates was amiable, energetic, but unheroic. It was difficult to perceive in this shaggy, kindly figure the warrior who has gone to seed but easy to understand that he was good company. Bates is a fine exponent of characters whose self-destructive or wayward behavior has obliged them to take refuge in a winning but desperate degree of charm. Here his strongest scene was the parley with his fellow triumvirs in Rome, in which Antony's ease of manner contrasted with the stiffness and vocal deliberation of Guy Henry's Octavius Caesar. Antony was master of the table as of the situation, handing out bread rolls and dispensing wine. That he should ever have bestrid the world like a colossus did seem fanciful. The genuine subtleties and strengths of the performance were best appreciated from the middle of the stalls: projection on the scale required by the Stratford main house seemed not to be at the actor's command. In purely physical terms Enobarbus (Malcolm Storry) was more convincing as a fighting man. His was also a performance of wit and feeling, in which the delicious absurdity of the barge speech was savored and the conflict between reason and affection was fully explored. In his death scene Enobarbus beat at his chest with one fist (“I am alone the villain of the earth”) in a gesture reminiscent of harrowing scenes of grief familiar from Balkan news reports and also suggestive of a literal breaking of the heart. According to the production's established custom, he then walked off, leaving his jacket behind him. …

Note

1. See my “Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1996-98: or the Search for a Policy,” Shakespeare Quarterly 50 (1999): 185-205.