Shisha pipes, gaudy rugs and endlessly flowing whiskey adorned the marble atmosphere of Downing’s Howard Theatre for this scaled-down production of Shakespeare’s most majestic tragedy.  The cold authority of Rome suggested by the college’s classical geometry was drowned out by Egyptian languor, which turned the architectural backdrop into an illustration not of power but of decadence.  Lounging on sofas amidst the action, the audience, meanwhile, became an extension of Cleopatra’s entourage.

Indeed, the production overcame one of the many problems usually faced by this play—characterising the violently opposed atmospheres of Rome and Alexandria within rapid scene changes—by denying Rome any real shape of its own.  Instead, the Roman business world was portrayed through the immaculate Edwardian suits of Caesar and his followers.  While in large clusters these were capable of creating scenes of political formality, in general they cleverly suggested the out-of-place nature of warfare in a feminised world of indulgence.  (This was emphasised by the production’s decision to make Alexas female, and to have Mardian the eunuch portrayed by an actress: the opposition stretched to gender.)

Yet this domestic atmosphere contrasted oddly with the direction of the play as a whole.  While the languor of Cleopatra’s palace was perfectly realised, the production was at its best in representing the play’s larger political scope.  The central romance came across as unusually played down.  The actors seemed to falter slightly when they attempted to merge the worlds of Rome and of Egypt.  The scenes of affection between Cleopatra and her women had great poignancy; Caesar showed controlled power and his relationship with Antony was subtly portrayed.  But there was a curious lack of any great romantic chemistry between Antony and Cleopatra themselves.

Their finest scene together was Antony’s fit of rage following the queen’s desertion of him at sea: a brief point where the strongest assets of both actors—their representation of unwieldy authority—came to the fore and matched each other perfectly.  But elsewhere there was less range; Cleopatra in particular did not show the infinite variety required by Shakespeare’s greatest heroine, and the final scene remained too firmly in pathos, failing to reach grandeur.  This, however, proved a surprisingly small fault in a fast-paced production which did justice to a play virtually impossible to bring off in performance with the entirety of its imaginative scope.

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