Paul Anderson, review of Antony and Cleopatra (National Theatre), Tribune, 24 April 1987
Judi Dench plays a superb, sensuous Cleopatra in the National's Antony and Cleopatra; so say all the critics, and, for a change, they're right in their unanimity. They also like Michael Bryant's worldweary Enobarbus and Tim Piggott-Smith's icy, mean Octavius — and they're right there too.
Anthony Hopkins' Antony, by contrast, has had a mixed press. Some love him; others hate him. For my taste, he is more suited to the part than he is to Lear(whom he's playing in the same theatre), but is so consistently boisterous that he becomes tedious. I wouldn't go for him if I were Cleopatra — which of course I'm not.
But don't let that put you off. Peter Hall's is an excellent production that should not be missed. It seems almost a no-nonsense staging of the play: it doesn't feel like dry-ice-plus-incredible-stage-machinery Shakespeare, even though it makes liberal use of dry ice and has large mobile crumbling colonnades that trundle across the stage at the end of every scene.
Pride of place is given to the narrative thrust of the story (it's played at lightning speed) and to the actors' interpretation of the words Shakespeare gives to his characters. Even the costumes are designed not to jar: they're a twentieth-century version of late renaissance, easing the audience into putting the play into the historical context in which it was written.
The absence of half-thought-out affectations gives a commonsense feel to the production — no doubt one reason for the sympathetic reviews it has received.
