Theatre review: Antony & Cleopatra(Shakespeare's Globe)

One of my A'Level English Shakespeares, and not one I've ever loved, Antony & Cleopatra had my favourite-ever production at the Globe. The latest revival's publicity makes a point of the fact that it's ten years since it was last seen there, but that wasn't the original intention: It was first announced that Deaf actress and familiar face at the venue Nadia Nadarajah would play the Queen of Egypt in 2020, in what was also meant to be that year's Michelle Terry-starrer in an unannounced role. I guess the Artistic Director might have been eyeing up Antony, but my bet would have been Cleopatra's chief lady in waiting Charmian, allowing her to translate from British Sign Language to English and back. If my guess was right then the four-year delay caused by lockdown made for a different high concept for Blanche McIntyre's production, which still stars Nadarajah as Cleopatra, but has her joined by a number of other D/deaf performers for a fully bilingual production.

So the conceit here is that the Roman language is Shakespeare's English; the Egyptian language is BSL. The languages are only translated on stage when it makes internal sense to the action - creative captions translate everything for the majority of the audience who won't be fluent in both languages.

Cleopatra hasn't needed to speak to make Mark Antony (John Hollingworth) fall for her; we open in Egypt where the Roman general has been in an open-ended party with her ever since he first went there on a diplomatic mission. He could probably get away with the extended vacation if he was sole emperor, but he shares power with the older Lepidus (Peter Landi) and, more dangerously, the younger Octavius Caesar (Bert Seymour,) who's tired of Antony not doing his share, and happy to use the excuse to grab full power for himself.

There's a few reasons I find Antony & Cleopatra can be hard work: The plot includes a series of gradually growing skirmishes and battles, which are essentially circling around the fact that Antony and Caesar are attempting various ways of cooperating before eventually accepting that they're fated to turn on each other. The character of Caesar doesn't help either - in contrast to the flawed but joyously human title pair, their main antagonist is ruthlessly, sociopathically successful, and consequently quite dull. The most famous problem is Cleopatra herself, or the lack of her: Shakespeare's biggest drama queen makes sure she's the biggest star in the room, and she's missed when she's not there.

In this element the use of a purely visual language for the Egyptians is a useful one: Cleopatra needs to be watched to be understood, but doesn't always extend the same courtesy to others. It's noticeable here how many times in the play she gets carried away into a fantasy of what great or terrible news someone might be about to deliver to her, generally at the expense of bothering to find out what actual news the messenger is trying to impart. As Nadarajah wanders the stage furiously signing her reaction to something that's only happened in her imagination, Hollingworth sometimes has to bang on the stage to get her to pay attention to what's actually going on again.

The sign language also deals with the eternal desire to point out when Shakespeare's included a dirty line, without having to resort to the dreaded "gesture aggressively at crotch." Even to someone who doesn't know BSL there's no mistaking how explicitly smutty some of the signs are, but the bluntness does help bring to the fore how often Antony & Cleopatra's sexual relationship is used as an insult against them - inevitably in the different contexts of slut-shaming her, and suggesting he's been diminished by her influence.

Signing also subtly gives clues to character - Antony has learned to communicate with Cleopatra, and as his most loyal lieutenant Daniel Millar's Enobarbus also appears to have become fluent, communicating silently with Charmian (Zoë McWhinney) and Iras (Gabriella Leon.) Nadeem Islam wrings the comedy out of the scene where his hapless bearer of bad news gets silently attacked by the queen, and various messengers played by William Grint are paid attention to by Egyptians and Romans alike. By contrast when Caesar finally confronts the Egyptians he needs Mark Donald's Dolabella to translate, putting him at a remove from everyone else that feeds into the idea that he can't be trusted.

I also liked the way Ben Glover and Sarah Readman's creative captioning is very understated in adding to the experience, rightly focusing on making sure everyone can catch up with what everyone's saying. But there's little subtle touches, like a different font depending on whether they're rendering English or BSL, and different background colours placing each scene in Rome, Egypt or at sea. In the second half, this evolves to the orange Egyptian sun being eclipsed by the Roman blue, letting us know where the balance of power is at any given point in the ongoing battle.

The shadow of Anubis also appears on the screen to herald the big death scenes, adding pathos to Cleopatra's, and I guess some suggestion of seriousness to Antony's (Hollingworth just gamely accepting that Shakespeare chose to undercut his big moment by playing it for laughs.) I don't think it quite beats the last production I saw here but it comes close - McIntyre has a reputation for breathing life into some less popular Shakespeares, and the masterstroke here is in not just perfectly executing the bilingual production's storytelling*, but also in utilising it to bring life to a play that can have too many dull patches.

Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 15th of September at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.

*although maybe not entirely for the people behind me, who left grumbling that we didn't even see them eat the poisoned figs; having presumably missed the fact that the figs were fine, they were just used to smuggle in the poisonous snakes that Cleopatra and her attendants spend several minutes attaching to themselves for... fun, I guess?