Arriving with seconds to spare for the first night of Antony and Cleopatra, I had difficulty finding a seat – which would mean an impressively full house for any Cambridge production, but especially for a relatively low budget production in Pembroke New Cellars.  

The audience were certainly not disappointed by this thrilling play, charting the tumultuous love affair between Mark Antony and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, the war between Egypt and Rome, and the rise to power of the young Octavian. What is more, you get an impressive five suicides for your money, leaving the stage littered with corpses in true tragic Shakespearean style.

The acting quality was generally excellent, with particularly strong performances from the four leads. Seth Kruger perfectly captured the dramatic mood swings of the charismatic, reckless, conceited Mark Antony, torn between Roman masculinity and Egyptian femininity, and dressed to kill in a jazzy 80s shirt and a powder blue blazer. This contrasted beautifully with Laura Pujos’ Caesar, severe in both dress and manner, in a style reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher.

Pujos’ masterly subtle facial expressions and clipped voice were the perfect foil to Kruger’s compellingly candid and vulnerable Antony, and the tension between the pair was palpable. Henry Eaton-Mercer played the part of Enobarbus with an assured confidence particularly impressive in an actor new to the Cambridge theatre scene, and handled both witticisms and distraught monologues with equal aplomb. Beatriz Santos shone in Cleopatra’s comic, light-hearted sections, though this presentation of Cleopatra was perhaps a little too understated for the tragic and dramatic peak of the performance. Several supporting actors, particularly Peter Chappell as Lepidus, Ted Mackey as Agrippa and Griffin Twemlow as Eros, also deserve a mention.

The 80s vibe, which I was initially unsure about, worked well, with good use of costume, make-up and video projections throughout to set the scene. Unfortunately, however, other technical aspects of the production rather let down an otherwise impressive performance. As the seats in Pembroke New Cellars aren’t raised, it is impossible for most of the audience to see the floor of the stage – which wouldn’t have mattered, except that many key scenes took place with the actors sitting or lying on the floor towards the front of the stage, so that they were invisible to all but the front row.

There were also many scene changes which involved props and set being carried on and off stage. Again, not necessarily a problem in itself, but the scene changes ended up being as long as some of the scenes, and many of the adjustments to set and props seemed unnecessary. It would have been better to have had much simpler set and props, and instead kept the momentum of the production going without such frequent and protracted interruptions.

The scene changes were to a certain extent covered by 80s music (which, as a big fan of David Bowie and Kate Bush, I enjoyed) but the music often cut in and out very abruptly, which contributed to the overall impression of the performance as somewhat choppy and disconnected.

Hopefully, however, these technical issues will be resolved for the remainder of the play’s run. Even with these problems, the performance succeeded in enthralling the audience for more than two hours solid, which certainly says much for the overall direction of the production and the talent of the actors involved. On the whole it was one of the most successful and enjoyable performances I’ve seen at Pembroke, and well worth a trip to the theatre