(Nearly) Authentic Shakespeare

Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
The National Post

 A production of Antony and Cleopatra that features male-only actors is one of the theatrical highlights in London this season

Shakespeare's Cleopatra is a role in which notoriously few actresses have triumphed; Britain, Canada and the United States can furnish between them an illustrious list of recent casualties. This summer in London, however, the jinx was laid at least temporarily to rest, though not by an actress. The serpent of the old Nile was portrayed by a man: Mark Rylance, a prominent actor with an individual piping voice who is also the director of the restorationist open-air theatrical project known as Shakespeare's Globe.

The extent of this theatre's antiquarianism seems to vary from one production to another. Some plays are mounted in modern dress, others in doublet and hose. (Of course, in Shakespeare's time doublet and hose were modern dress, so either approach can be dubbed authentic.) Antony and Cleopatra was done Renaissance fashion with the odd classical accoutrement, which would certainly have been the Elizabethan way. The purism in these matters can go to extremes of fanaticism; Velcro, that heavenly gift to the quick- change artist, is outlawed at the Globe, leaving the actors, some of them in Antony playing half-a-dozen roles apiece, to wrestle with good, old- fashioned, unyielding buttons. Stage managers, on the other hand, are equipped with high-tech walkie-talkies, possibly on the theory that stage-management is a diabolical un- Elizabethan activity anyway, and that if you're going to sell your soul you may as well get a good price for it. Most of the Globe's productions have bowed further to modernity by having women played by women, and even this Antony was not wholly true to 17th-century convention since these roles were written to be played by boys, not men. But, man or boy, a male Cleopatra is able to side-step the problem that dogs any actress cast in the part: the implicit demand that she convince us that she is the sexiest woman in the world. (This in a play that, despite its erotic reputation, has virtually no love scenes.) With an actor, this expectation goes into abeyance; we simply take for granted that what we are told of her attractions is true. Rylance made a dangerously playful Cleopatra, whose flurries of temper could turn into tempests. The text dictates that when the queen is brought the news of Antony's marriage to her rival, Octavia, she turns all her fury on the helpless messenger, dragging him about the stage by his hair, finally all but knifing him. Rylance's mood-swings were at once horrific and hilarious; no other Cleopatra I have seen has dared to play these scenes so whole-heartedly; the beleaguered messenger seemed genuinely terrified, and no wonder.

Some 20 years ago, the British National Theatre mounted an all- male (and modern dress) As You Like It, whose four female characters were played in as many different styles, from an ascetic, virtually genderless Rosalind to a very funny pantomime-dame account of the country wench Audrey, from a young Anthony Hopkins. The Globe girls spanned an equally wide range; Octavia was dull, Charmian (Cleopatra's senior maid) an amusingly sharp-tongued piece of camp female impersonation, and Iras (her junior) a performance so accurately delicate that only the program cued you in that the character was being played by a man. This was a level shared by Rylance himself in Cleopatra's transcendent last scene, which he played quietly and simply in a frizzy scalp, as if the queen had cast off her wigs along with her earthly hopes.

Antony is a role that has wrecked even more reputations than Cleopatra, and the actor here (Paul Shelley) could do little more than go decently through the motions. But the play held, captivating an audience most of whom were standing for upward of three hours in an open courtyard, occasionally spattered by rain. (My 13- year old son was among them, and remarked that at the end he had no choice but to offer a standing ovation. His pampered elders, meanwhile, sat above and behind the stage in the gallery known as the lord's room from which they were rewarded stunning views of the tops of the actors' heads.)

The Globe has been in operation now for three years, and has proved a magnet for locals and tourists alike. Some of this, I imagine, has to do with the success of Shakespeare in Love, which has not only made Shakespeare's plays hot but his playhouse as well. Some has to do with the revival of the area: The South Bank of the Thames, east of the National Theatre and the Royal Festival Hall, was for many years an impenetrable wasteland but has recently become a walker's delight, dotted with museums, restaurants (the Oxo Tower provides a splendid view of the river) and extending down to Greenwich, with its famous Observatory and new Millennium Dome, taking in the financial district -- including the Reichmans' Canada Square -- en route.

The Globe fits in right here, a cunning mixture of historical reconstruction and modern salesmanship; not that the Elizabethans themselves were backward in the latter regard, and the Globe's bustling entry-yard honours both traditional and modern commerce, being the only theatre lobby in London where you can buy fresh fruit. Theoretically, you can fling this at the actors if the fancy takes you, and it is true that the Globe has largely succeeded with rumbustious comedies (by Shakespeare and his contemporaries) that encourage audience participation, vocal if not physical. Antony and Cleopatra offered heartening evidence that a great tragedy, honestly presented and wittily and intelligently spoken (the director, Giles Block, is billed as "master of the verse") can be just as captivating.

I wouldn't claim that this is ensemble theatre in the greatest English tradition. But then, there hasn't been much of that around recently: certainly not in the classics. There is more continuity in Canada, where acting standards have actually risen; certainly there is far more personality in the average Stratford cast than there was 20 years ago, which is as far back as my memory extends.

The British National Theatre had, in the last decade, given up any idea of maintaining a permanent company, but under its new director, Trevor Nunn, this may change. Nunn has established a company within the company: an ensemble, with a sizable black contingent, to perform half-a-dozen plays within the year. Two of these, Troilus and Cressida and The Merchant of Venice, seem to have re-established Nunn as the best director of Shakespeare in, probably, the world; unfortunately, neither was playing during my visit.