Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✭✩✩
by William Shakespeare, directed by Martha Henry
Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford
May 28-September 27, 2003
"Cleopatra Abandoned"
Diane D'Aquila gives a superb performance as the Egyptian Queen in the Stratford Festival production of "Antony and Cleopatra". Unfortunately, her performance stands abandoned in a desert of mediocrity. Nothing else in the production--not the design, direction or other performances--is up to her level or gives her support. The result is that one of Shakespeare greatest plays comes off as underpowered and unsatisfying.
You know something is wrong as soon as you enter the Tom Patterson Theatre. Upstage is a metal platform that looks like a truncated Eiffel Tower. It turns out that this is Cleopatra's "monument" but it still appears that she has hied herself to Paris. It is clear that the show has been assigned a very low budget. Women in the audience were more expensively dressed and sported more jewels than this Cleopatra ever does even when she asks for her finest array. Nothing ever conjures up the greatness that was Egypt or the grandeur that was Rome. Except for a too-obvious wheel-of-fortune projection, even Louise Guinand's lighting does little to conjure up mood or atmosphere. Surely the Festival could have foregone one of the innumerable costume changes in the over-opulent Siam of "The King and I" to help deck out this play.
Given the budget constraints, designer Allan Wilbee needed to be especially inventive. He is not. Out of their armour, which is most of the time, the Romans wear what seem to be a two-piece form of long johns so that Peter Donaldson is forced vainly to conjure up Antony's greatness while striding about in his underwear. Wilbee's Egyptians sport wigs as historically they did, but these wigs are of such poor quality they make Cleopatra's servants look more like refugees from a caveman movie. And why is one of her servants wearing the double crown of Egypt reserved for royalty? Cleopatra's outfits for most of the show are various ill-fitting shifts seemingly in constant danger of slipping off.
Glamour, of course, is not as important in a play as acting. As in Diane D'Aquila this production has one truly remarkable performance. What makes Shakespeare's Cleopatra one of the greatest female roles is its combination of opposites. She is strong yet capricious, earthy yet divine. Unlike most actors I've seen in the role, D'Aquila captures all of this and makes this coexistence of contradictions seem natural. To accomplish this is a major triumph.
This jewel of a performance would shine brighter if only the rest of the company provided a proper foil to set it off. Peter Donaldson seems to play Mark Antony's loss of honour as if it were a separate tragedy. At no point does he conjure up the love for Cleopatra that is the cause of his losing face. Director Martha Henry does not help matters by having him pinch a Roman servant's bum as if Mark Antony were merely a common lecher than a man bound in love to a great queen. Unusually for Donaldson, he tends to rush his lines seldom bringing out their grandeur.
In the two other major roles, Wayne Best shows Enobarbus' pain at having betrayed Mark Antony, but never establishes the love he has for his master despite, or because of, the great man's faults. Paul Dunn is simply too weak as Octavius Caesar to suggest that this young man represents the harsh puritanical new world order, one that cannot comprehend the magnificence of the world it subdues.
There are good performances in minor roles--Timothy Askew as the Messenger Cleopatra beats and as Eros Antony's servant and Andy Velásquez as Pompey and later as Dolabella. Otherwise, such stalwarts as Ian Deakin (Maecenas), Keith Dinicol (Demetrius/Canidius), Margot Dionne (Iras), John Dolan (Lepidus/Proculeius), Aaron Franks (Decretas/Soothsayer), Brad Rudy (Thidias/Menas) and Paul Soles (Agrippa) general little enthusiasm. Bernard Hopkins might have succeeded as the eunuch Mardian and the Clown who brings Cleopatra her asps except that Henry has decided, contrary to the text, that these are not comic parts. Daniela Lama plays Cleopatra's servant Charmian as if the show were a perfume commercial and Linda Prystawska speaks Octavia's line but seems clueless as to their meaning.
The general lethargy afflicting the production has to put down to Martha Henry's direction. This is a play about the clash of two worlds and two world views, but Henry never brings this out. Except for the odd bout of jogging, the Romans seem as listless as the Egyptians. Despite overlapping the beginnings and endings of the play's numerous scenes, the pace is slack and no sense of urgency arises.
Stratford last mounted the play in 1993. I suppose we will now have to wait another ten years for Stratford to stage it again. All the more pity then, having in D'Aquila the first actor at Stratford in decades with more than sufficient intensity and command of nuance to play Cleopatra, that the Festival could not muster the artistic and material resources necessary to make this great play the triumph for her that it could have been.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Diane D’Aquila and Peter Donaldson. ©2003 Stratford Festival.
2003-06-09
Antony and Cleopatra