Michael Boyd’s modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s political tragedy is, compared with many other productions of this long play, brisk and lucid. But it’s still no breeze. It treats the play as a diptych: the first half is funny, the second tragic. In neither key is it really satisfying, though there are flashes of brilliance.
Our response to Antony and Cleopatra is always conditioned by our feelings about the central relationship. Here it’s not easy to believe in.
Darrell D’Silva is a rough, wilful Antony. He bristles with a self-indulgent sort of charisma. In the closing scenes, he is truly moving. Yet while his personal magnetism is plausible, we sense little of the explosive, problematic sexual chemistry of his liaison with Cleopatra.
Kathryn Hunter seems miscast as the Egyptian ruler who inspires him. Her Cleopatra is certainly a far cry from the ravishing enchantress of so many interpretations. Perhaps her volatile monarch is closer to the historical reality; Plutarch suggested in his life of Antony that Cleopatra was more of a wit than a beauty. Although Hunter’s performance is full of wiry energy, she doesn’t inhabit the character so much as advertise it.
Elsewhere the performances are uneven. Greg Hicks is a fine, haunting Soothsayer. Brian Doherty’s Enobarbus is a strikingly ribald figure who conjures a note of guilt from within the depths of his militaristic coarseness. However, others are less effective, and some of the verse-speaking sounds impatient. What we gain in physical immediacy we lose in poetry. Often we don’t get to register the grandeur of the best lines in this most linguistically restless of tragedies.
More awkwardly, there’s not a strong impression of place, and the play’s politics never feel adequately developed. The production’s modern aesthetic ought to prompt insights into contemporary conflict and diplomacy but it doesn’t.
This is an Antony and Cleopatra that affords pleasures but also real frustrations.
Until December 30. Information 0844 482 8008.
Antony And Cleopatra
Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road, Camden Town, NW1 8EH
