Antony and Cleopatra

O, Antony!

The Pop-Up Globe continues to sweep all before it with all remaining shows almost completely sold out (groundling tickets are still available though, except for Twelfth Night on Friday 22nd when these tickets are sold out too). So it turns out ushering is not only an economic way to see the plays, but almost the only way...

That said, I probably saw less of yesterday's performance - Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Vanessa Byrnes - than any of the previous ones. It was the first time I had ushered for a performance open to the general public (all the others had been school matinees). Turns out adults need more babysitting than school children... there was a good deal of debate (even dispute) over allocated seats and several people were very late, so I missed most of the play's opening.

Probably because of this, the play seemed quite disjointed and even confusing in places. Also it had been heavily cut (both in length - to just over 2 hours - and in the number of characters), and as the director's programme notes admitted, they had "taken huge liberties with the text; characters are split into two, merged together, introduced as completely new personalites, and completely cut from the text." This did not help my comprehension either, although admittedly my working knowledge of Antony and Cleo is not nearly as good as some of the other plays... Then there was the scene where Octavia confronts Cleopatra. I had no recollection of this being in the play at all and was mighty relieved to read in the programme notes afterwards that this was actually inserted from another play (All For Love [1677], by John Dryden) and that my memory was not quite so sieve-like as I had feared! Throughout the play there was a good deal of music and singing - I suspect intended to hold the text together, but often just vaguely confusing.

As to the cast: Cleopatra was good, and seemed to get better as the play progressed. Antony I felt was not as noble as he should have been, though the director's notes did say that she had chosen to approach the characters "as real people who are flawed and fallible," so maybe this was deliberate. Still... O, Antony! Caesar managed to be both funny and creepy, often at the same time (he also reminded me of Charles Grey's  Blofeld, and once that image had got into my head I couldn't get it out again). Pompey was quite frankly perplexing. He (or rather she, since he was played by a she) and his piratical henchman (Menas and Menacrates) were played with very, very thick Scottish accents, for no reason on earth that I could think of... as Pompey was also dressed in greeny-brown and swathed around the head with loose scarves ("all tentacle-y") the effect reminded me of nothing so much as Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean films!

My photos from this show are very bad, partly because I was busy for much of the time, and partly because I was on the middle gallery again, where the scaffolding is not conducive to good photo-taking. Still, I managed to snatch one of Davy Jones. You will have to imagine the Scottish accent. 

Davy Jones, aka Pompey

Davy Jones almost stole the show (for me anyway), but the best bit was this part (Antony's death; Cleopatra is taking refuge in her 'monument'):

CLEO: ... But come, come, Antony - 

Help me, my women - we must draw thee up.

Assist, good friends.

[...]

[They begin lifting].

The question of how to make this stage business work - just how to 'draw up' Antony to the 'monument' - is a tricky one. Years ago I read somewhere that at the original Globe Cleopatra's 'monument' could have been one of the boxes or balconies above the stage, with the dying Antony somehow hoisted aloft by means of ropes - which sounds both difficult and dangerous. Yesterday at the Pop-Up Globe Cleopatra said her speech from the main stage floor, with Antony 'dying' at her feet in the yard, among the groundlings. This of course meant that at "assist, good friends," there were half-a-dozen groundlings ready and willing to bear a hand, lifting up Antony and rolling him onto the stage!

There are many deaths in the play (basically he dies, she dies, they all die, while poor old Pompey is dispatched by the end of Act III), but after the bloodbath of Romeo and Juliet they seemed a little tame; no fake blood and the 'dead' merely got up and walked off the stage - a lot quicker and easier than having them hauled off, but still, they were supposed to be dead...

Overall - an interesting production; rather hodge-podge, a little perplexing, but (despite the lack of gore) suitably dramatic, and the poetry was as superb as ever:

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tunéd spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping. His delights 

Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above

The element they lived in. In his livery

Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropped from his pockets.

~

I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.