Julius Caesar/ Antony and Cleopatra
Playwright: William Shakespeare Directors: Angus Jackson/ Iqbal Khan Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-avon (01789-403493) Until 9 September/ 7 September Running times: 2hrs 52mins/ 3hrs 17mins (both including interval)
“It’s very clear.” That was a comment I overheard a member of the audience make during the interval of Julius Caesar, said Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard. And there’s no denying the exemplary clarity of Angus Jackson’s production. But, goodness, is it slow: it has none of the “hurtling energy” this play “desperately requires”. By contrast, Iqbal Khan’s production of Antony and Cleopatra – which kicks off the RSC’S Rome season in tandem with Julius Caesar – is the best I’ve ever seen. It is “fluid and confident”, and offers a pair of meaty, committed performances from Antony Byrne as the “nononsense warrior and pleasure seeker” Antony, and Josette Simon as a magnificent Cleopatra.
Well, I found both productions lacklustre, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. In both, designer Robert Innes Hopkins drapes the action in a “very Hollywood notion of historical authenticity” – all togas, swords and imposing colonnades. The look is “so retro-opulent, you half expect a thundering chariot, or Elizabeth Taylor, to put in an appearance”. It’s pleasant to look at, but makes for a very conventional staging. So little effort is made to draw parallels with modern-day events, it’s “as if the RSC is turning its back on the daunting political upheavals of our age: the return of autocracy, the savage, chaotic aftermath of civil uprisings”. The shows are also marred by some odd casting. The boyish Alex Waldmann, for example, makes for an “insufficiently virile” Brutus. And what about Simon’s bizarre “faux-exotic” accent, asked Ian Shuttleworth in the FT. “Unspecifically mutated vowels, Sean Connery sibilants and a sing-song (or rather shing-shong) cadencing cripple the impact of even her most earnest lines.”
Maybe so, said Michael Billington in The Guardian, but she still gives a “hypnotically mercurial” performance. For me, however, the pick of the productions was Julius Caesar. Everything about it “feels right”. I loved Waldmann’s “troubled, neurotic” Brutus, and Martin Hutson as Cassius was stunning.