Review of reviews: Stage

Antony and Cleopatra/Julius Caesar

Harman Center for the Arts

Washington, D.C.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

(202) 547-1122

***

“What does a ‘traditional’ Shakespeare production look like?” said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. In recent decades, it’s become harder to remember. Ever since Orson Welles gave Macbeth a Haitian voodoo gloss in 1936, theater companies have run amok, transposing the action from one time period to another in search of topical relevance. That’s what makes the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s straight-down-the-center stagings of Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar so refreshing. The set design for the two histories does its best to imitate ancient Rome, and the actors sport togas. Both plays share a single cast—which makes sense, considering that many roles overlap—and die-hard theatergoers can even watch both plays back-to-back, beginning at 2 p.m. and ending at 11. “That’s a lot of Shakespeare in one gulp,” but seeing the entire saga is riveting and rewarding.

The night begins with Julius Caesar, which is the weaker of the two productions, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Director David Muse’s take is “drier than necessary,” but interesting in the way it highlights the “appreciably smaller and meaner qualities” of the emperor’s personality. As Cassius and Brutus, Scott Parkinson and Tom Hammond form a strong bond with each other, but fail to forge one with the audience. Andrew Long as Mark Antony gives the most seductive performance, outwitting the conspirators and finding his eloquence—which is fortunate for the second play, in which Long jumps forward to assume the lead.

Studying Antony’s transformation from one play to the next makes this dual staging worthwhile, said The Washington Times. Long masterfully portrays how the Roman general “loses his military bearings and eventually his honor” under the influence of the seductress Cleopatra. Equally, Suzanne Bertish’s slatternly, wild portrayal of the Egyptian queen makes the tricks she employs to snare Antony believable. Together, they generate a smoldering chemistry. Antony and Cleopatra isn’t the most compelling of the Bard’s works, but director Michael Kahn’s interpretation “brings form, function, and genuine pathos to the play’s otherwise unwieldy structure.”