" Antony and Cleopatra." By William Shakespeare. The Marlowe Society.
At the Festival Theatre, Cambridge
Tax production of Antony and Cleopatra at Cambridge this week is not unworthy of the society and producer that gave us King Lear in 1929 and hamlet in 1932 ; and that is praise indeed. To the casual reader it seemed a hopeless task to stage these forty-two kaleidoscopic scenes. Visions arose of a corpse-laden and fitfully. revolving Bosworth Field at this same Festival Theatre not so long ago. But the Marlowe Society 'wade a virtue of the necessity that drove them. for this year to that theatre. They did not use the revolving stage ; but here on the spacious steps before the curtain there was room for these Romans to pace at their ease, while behind it a few blocks skilfully lit made up all the scenery that was .required for Actium or Alexandria or a galley.
There was one major. innovation : - the womens parts
were taken by girls ; and it should- be said immediately that the chance of finding an undergraduate capable of taking the part of Cleopatra was in any case infinitesimal. This great responsibility fell to a Newnhamite, and the result left one rather in doubt. Not for any fault of her own. In isolation it was a most gallant achievement ; she looked well and acted with great intelligence. Her one fault was a tendency to fall, in the tenser passages, into a rather monotonous ringing tune of voice, which marred the essential effect of " infinite variety," and from which she could only escape by a difficult, self-conscious effort. She was best, perhaps, in the last scene, with a capital Clown to play up to her. And it may well be doubted whether _Cam- bridge could have found, in any year, a more adequate Cleopatra of either sex. She was hampered by a cold in the head, by clothes which were striking but awkward, and by a certain disinclination of Antony to be anything approaching a strumpet's fool. And here we touch the kernel of the
-whole matter. There was not a complete contact between the careful Psychological study given by this accomplished actress and the spontaneous gusto of the undergraduates around her.
Antony was a splendid figure, bravely clad, blessed with a fine, if not highly flexible, voice, and speaking his lines after the high Marlowe fashion. Caesar was perfectly east and acted admirably—cold but not too callous at the beginning. hypocritical but not altogether insincere at the end. Eno- barbus also was ' good. In his account of Cleopatra on the Cydnus he was still Enobarbus, rather puzzled with himself, not a mere mouthpiece for poeticized Plutarch.
But perhaps the most striking feature of this production was the way in which the minor characters made scene after scene come to life. There was scarcely a dull moment.
The Astrologer, with his impressive voice and unearthly appearance, giggled over by the delightful has and Chartnian ; Lepidus, endowed by nature with as Roman a face as any bust in the Capitoline Museum, upon which appeared from time to time a smile of unbelievable inanity ; Menus, whose vivid scene with Sextus followed a most amusing carouse,
Octavia, Eros, - the these, • and many others, made valuable contributions. The costumes. •.designed by a member. of the .society, were highly imaginative and in the main effective.
PATRICK WILKINSON.
Previous page
