A GRAND BUT DOOMED PASSION

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Directed by Davis Robinson; written by William Shakespeare
With: Janis Stevens, Mark S. Cartier, Gerald Browning, Kevin Hoffmann, Dennis A. Price, Jessica Drizd, and Bill Van Horn
In repertory at The Theater At Monmouth in Monmouth, Maine
From July 30 to August 21, 2004

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

With Antony and Cleopatra, I will have seen all four plays being performed in repertory this summer at The Theater At Monmouth, and this is a bittersweet experience. Although there are other events (Pippi Longstocking, The Vagina Monologues, and The Complete History of America), the repertory plays are the main attractions, and I am sorry this is the last one. I love movies, but nothing can replace the thrill of theater where the performances are quite literally in the flesh. With these immediate and changeable performances come an energy and intensity that a movie, however good, can never have. Also, I expect that theater, for all its pomp, harkens back to a time when, as University of Maine Professor Raphael Di Luzio put it, “the quiet eye” was the norm (as opposed to today and the “quick, noisy eye” of mass media). The quick, noisy eye may have its attractions, but so does the quiet eye.

Antony and Cleopatra are perhaps one of the most famous pairs of doomed lovers, and like all such pairs, they are fascinating, compelling, and exasperating, but not necessarily in that order. Most people, even if they are unfamiliar with the story, have heard of the unlucky duo who were crushed by the Roman Empire. Older theatergoers will no doubt remember the movie version featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who, while not as doomed as Antony and Cleopatra, certainly brought a real-life passion and recklessness to their roles.

When the play opens, Mark Antony (Mark S. Cartier) has more or less “retired” to Egypt to spend his days with the sultry Cleopatra (Janis Stevens), whom “age cannot whither.” And why not? Antony has done his part for Rome by crushing the rebellion of Brutus and Cassius (another unlucky pair) and by helping to establish Octavius Caesar as the ruler. We are led to believe that neither Antony nor Cleopatra are in their “salad days,” and by Shakespeare’s measure, this would probably put them somewhere in their forties. By Roman reckoning, this would be close to the end of their life expectancy. Therefore, Antony can be forgiven for being “transform’d into a strumpet’s fool.” He’s an old warrior who feels he deserves his peace and pleasure.

But Rome will not leave Antony alone. Fulvia, his wife, has died, and Octavius Caesar wants Antony to return to Rome to help him crush various rebellions (led mainly by Pompey) that have cropped up in his absence. However much Antony might like to linger with Cleopatra, he knows that he must return to Rome.

Cleopatra, in today’s parlance, would be considered “high maintenance” and does not take this news calmly. She recriminates, they quarrel, but, in the end, they make up before Antony returns to Rome.

In Rome, things start out well enough. Caesar and Antony come to a grudging understanding, and Antony, out of Cleopatra’s sight, decides to marry Caesar’s sister in the hopes of forging a permanent alliance with the Roman ruler. However, the alliance is an uneasy one, and it isn’t long before Antony deserts his new wife and makes his way back to Egypt and Cleopatra, who has been loudly and dramatically pining for Antony in his absence.

Theatergoers, of course, know that it is a never a good thing to oppose a powerful ruler, and they can be fairly certain that Antony is in for a hard time, trapped between the vengeful Caesar and the demanding Cleopatra. Even with so much a given, the play at this point becomes a baffling series of action and counteraction, with little reflection from any of the main characters to add the necessary illumination to their folly and manipulations.

Usually, Shakespeare has his characters give voice to their feelings and motives, which, in turn, makes the audience empathize with them, no matter how foolish or evil the characters are. But there is little of this in Antony and Cleopatra. For example, we never really know why Caesar and Antony are at such odds with each other. They just are. When Cleopatra’s ships, in a battle against Caesar, suddenly seem to go to Rome’s side, we never know if Cleopatra is betraying Antony (he thinks so) or if the Egyptian sailors are cowards. When Caesar seems to be winning the fight, does Cleopatra really consider bowing to him? And not long after, when Antony turns against Cleopatra, why, if she is thinking of joining with Caesar, does she pretend to die so that she can discover the true depths of Antony’s feelings? Shakespeare doesn’t give us the inner workings of Antony, Caesar, and Cleopatra, and the play suffers from this. The action takes on a hurried, random quality that left this viewer more than a little bewildered. Apparently, others have been confused as well. Oxford Professor A. C. Bradley wrote, “something of the confusion which bewilders the reader’s mind in King Lear recurs in Antony and Cleopatra, the most faultily constructed of all the tragedies.”

The Bard, being human and under tremendous pressure to produce, was bound to have his weak moments, and it seems to me that Antony and Cleopatra might just be one of them. However, the Bard’s weak moments are still worth seeing. Despite the nearly incomprehensible action, the tumultuous passion between Antony and Cleopatra saves the play, making it compelling and, in the end, unforgettable. All else seems to pale in comparison with the passion between two characters who could reasonably be referred to as feisty senior citizens of the ancient world. We can’t help but be moved by their blazing emotion, and I expect it is this quality that has kept the play alive through the centuries.

Therefore, the success of this play hinges on the performances of Antony and Cleopatra, and the actors’ abilities to make the passion gripping and all consuming. Fortunately, The Theater At Monmouth’s production is completely successful in doing this. Janis Stevens’s and Mark S. Cartier’s performances are emotionally charged, and never for one moment did I doubt the depth of Antony’s and Cleopatra’s feelings toward each other. This depth saves the doomed lovers from descending into bathos, and it gives resonance and poignancy to their death.

Puppets, used on stage and behind a scrim, lend a certain oddness to the production and remind viewers that they are indeed watching a performance. Somehow, this oddness is in keeping with the tale of Antony and Cleopatra, whose actions seem random yet are in fact proscribed. Even though the journey is puzzling, we know what Antony and Cleopatra’s fate will be, and as they hurtle through their scenes, they burn their way into our senses and quite rightly take their place as famous yet tragic lovers. In the end, that is what we remember and that is all that really matters. 

 

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