Free Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare Page A

1972, stimulated interest in Ancient Egypt, as mile-long queues snaked around the British Museum. The text accompanying artwork in the theater program referred to “Cleopatra wearing the sun-disk and horns of Hathor, Egyptian goddess of love. From a bas-relief carved at the time of Cleopatra in the temple at Deir el Bahri Egypt.” The production’s costumes and design, by Christopher Morley, tapped into this interest. Critic Kenneth Hurren noted that “the way in which Cleopatra’s court is kitted out might well have excited the envy of the late Tutankhamen (even the platoon of flabby, shaven-headed eunuchs appear to have small fortunes in gold and lapis lazuli hung about their necks).” 50
    The design highlighted the contrast between the play’s two worlds:
    While a clear sky gleamed over Rome, a mottled heaven looked down upon the changeable world of Cleopatra, whose every mood was framed with a different environment. Beneath canopies of midnight blue or orange, the Queen lay on divans or cushions; or dreaming of angling for Antony in the river, on a great keyhole-shaped bed. While the stark black and white of the Romans’ clothes was modified only by a formal purple, Cleopatra’s court disported themselves in pinks, mauves and oranges. 51
    Michael Billington of the
Guardian
commented that Richard Johnson’s Antony suggested his “Herculean past, his weak presence and his hope of redemption through love: the grace-notes may be missing but it’s a performance that suggests the lines have passed through the actor’s imagination.” 52 Reviewers concurred in also singlingout particular praise for Patrick Stewart in the role of Enobarbus: over thirty years later, he would return to the play as Antony.
    Glenda Jackson, directed by Peter Brook (1978)
    While Trevor Nunn’s memorable production presented a historical sense of Egypt to capture the imagination, Peter Brook’s austere interpretation gave a different emphasis. He took a purposefully unromantic approach, reading the lovers (Glenda Jackson and Alan Howard) as self-indulgent figures who were at the same time forever embroiled in political intrigue. The veteran reviewer J. C. Trewin was impressed:
    This, the most important production of the year, is a grandly expository
Antony and Cleopatra
not (as the play used to be) an indulgent romantic orgy…Philo’s opening fanfare is uttered directly to the house (as much else is, including a great deal of the Barge speech) and the entrance of Antony (Alan Howard) and Cleopatra (Glenda Jackson) is almost inconspicuous in the middle of an austere set, like a vacant conservatory opaquely glazed. Scene hurtles upon scene with hardly a second’s pause. The tragedy of this illusion sweeps across the stage uncut… These are lovers for the high-event; they are never conventionally aloof from each other…believe me, Brook, Jackson and Howard are a triumvirate to remember. 53
    Not all reviewers were so enthusiastic. One sneered that “Miss Jackson does not register on an emotional level,” 54 while another—clearly longing for something more in the mold of Elizabeth Taylor—was put off by her “Eton crop”: “I couldn’t persuade myself that Miss Jackson’s mannish lady was a Cleopatra capable of the sexual and social excesses we have described to us.” 55 Don Chapman of the
Oxford Mail
remarked: “It is left to Alan Howard as Mark Antony to suggest the epic nature of their love in a performance of remarkable emotional and vocal power.” 56 Michael Billington, by contrast, found much to admire in Jackson’s performance:
    Glenda Jackson’s Cleopatra is certainly the most ferocious I have ever seen: no messenger is safe from a hair pulling. Shekicks her treasurer right around the stage and even Antony is often pummeled by her far from tiny fist…Miss Jackson also suggests the wit, the volatility and the genuine passion (witness the shriek of pain when she thinks Antony is dead).
    Billington also described how