Summary 
Strongly acted modernization of the late Roman tragedy runs long at three hours and ten minutes but is expertly directed and crisply paced, with some wise reordering and editing of scenes. A live band plays incidental music and evocative sound effects above and beyond the stage, plus there are eye-catchingly colorful costumes, but the two oddly dynamic romantic leads - he a Roman ruffian George Clooney, she an Egyptian fashionista Carmen Miranda - share little chemistry onstage.
Design
Directed by Michael Boyd. Designed by Tom Piper. Lights by Wolfgang Gobbel. Music by James Jones and John Woolf. Fights by Terry King. Sound by Andrew Franks.
Cast
Darrell D'Silva (Mark Antony), John Mackay (Caesar), Sandy Neilson (Lepidus), Kathryn Hunter (Cleopatra), Hannah Young (Charmian), Samantha Young (Iras), Tunji Kasim (Mardian), Greg Hicks (Soothsayer), Brian Doherty (Enobarbus), Charles Aitken (Ventidius), Sophie Russell (Octavia), Clarence Smith (Pompey).
Analysis
Michael Boyd's modernized Antony and Cleopatra for the Royal Shakespeare Company features a looming white sail over the Courtyard Theatre's thrust stage. The ramped stage, with a series of double doors overhead in the balcony, is flanked by ladders, and ladders are also used behind the orchestra seats against the galleries. A six-piece band plays live on stage but is elevated above and obscured behind a curving wooden column that dominates the playing area. The band expertly plays incidental music and evocative sound effects in a cleverly engaging score. Kathryn Hunter's tiny Cleopatra begins the production by racing to a spotlight at center stage, her opening words spoken in a heavy Latin accent. With her diminutive appearance, jet-black hair, affected mannerisms, and thick accent, the actress recalls Carmen Miranda of black-and-white films of the 1930s and 1940s. Her lover, Mark Antony, is played by Darrell D'Silva with the salt-and-pepper-haired savoir faire of a dark-eyed George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven. D'Silva's dashing Antony arrives 1.1 in a tuxedo and passionately makes out with Cleopatra, the two of them groping and rolling around on the floor like overwrought teenagers. The portrayals are jarringly unexpected, odd choices for the fulcrum of a romantic tragedy, but the strangeness gives way to memorable portrayals of a hyper-animated Latina Cleopatra and her martini-sipping super-spy boy toy.
Hunter's Cleopatra, Copacabana-style flowers in her hair, wears a flowing green and blue gown, and she affectedly smokes a cigarette in a holder, accompanied by three omnipresent attendants, two female and the other a long-haired eunuch guitarist. When Hunter's attention-deficit Cleopatra pretends to faint and nearly falls during the 1.2 soiree, she is aided by her striking female assistants, both dressed to complement if not mimic her fashion style, one a tall brunette and the other a tinier blonde with pinkish strawberry highlights. Boyd gifts Hunter's Cleopatra with a series of show-stopping costumes and scenery-chewing on-stage antics, from her riding the back of the guitar-strumming stud like a horse 1.5 while clad in a furry emerald-green robe, or fuming 3.7 at the intimation she would be a distraction in battle to Antony, while she and the posse girls sport white pants suits, black boots, ivory-white jackets with black belts, kicky berets and dark sunglasses. After ordering her attendants to pretend to be swimming fish 2.5, the melodramatic black-clad Cleopatra punches a messenger for her assumption Antony has died, and she knocks him down and draws a knife from her garter belt. Although she calms the messenger with a cigarette, she then draws a pistol and fires - a wickedly loud and reverberating shot - and as he flees she twirls, swinging the weapon wildly while her entourage duck and scatter.
Later in 3.3, Cleopatra questions the same (now cowed) messenger while dressed head-to-toe in crimson red, like her attending women, but unlike the long-haired musician Mardian, whose silver suit covers a bright red shirt. Breathlessly eager for confirmation that she is more attractive than Octavia, Hunter's über-vain Cleopatra compels the messenger's evasive answers to confirm for her that Octavia is dull of tongue, creeping in gait and older than thirty. When asked the color of Octavia's hair, the messenger nervously responds - "she is blonde, bond ... bald!" - as Cleopatra and her posse happily applaud and sing. During 4.4, with the stage awash in a glaring white spotlight like a searchlight on a military base, grim-visaged soldiers stand on watch as Cleopatra emerges from an upstage fog with her entourage, suggestively kneeling to help D'Silva's Antony don his armor for battle. And during the 4.13 betrayal, the chameleon Cleopatra and her ladies - all dressed in sleek black business suits - stand among soldiers in combat fatigues with headsets and binoculars. Boyd suspends the action to dramatic slow-motion as Cleopatra's ladies hold hands solemnly then lead her away from the heartbroken Antony.
Darrell D'Silva infuses his Antony with a swaggering machismo and decadent elegance, a la George Clooney, and he sports a dark goatee, black-flecked gray hair, and open-necked shirts, as well as a laconic wit: "I've seen her die twenty times." During 2.2 he emerges from the dramatically backlit doors like a James Bond super-spy in suit and overcoat, striding with manly confidence into the emergency war council. D'Silva's performance is assured and strong, but the styling - albeit memorable - doesn't quite seem apt, perhaps a little too weathered, a little too corpulent, for the seething Roman warrior. He has his fortune read to a throbbing sound-effect hum by the soothsayer in 2.3, and he settles with disconcerting comfort into his life with his new wife - despite being recently widowed and keeping an exotic long-term mistress - as he struts in a playboy bathrobe and puffs a cigar while Octavia slinks around him bare-legged in one of his work shirts. D'Silva's Antony does his best Danny Ocean during the soldierly celebration in 2.7, looking cool in his cockeyed sailor hat as he smokes his victory cigar and drinks a cocktail, relating stories while lesser characters sway in slow motion behind him, then winning a drinking game and leading a dance - while singing, "drink to Octavius!" - in a lurching circle around the stage. D'Silva's Antony becomes grim with the re-approach of war, and he wears combat fatigues during the fight by sea.
D'Silva's Antony concludes the intermission in full house lights, walking slowly through the audience to the stage - "whither hast thou led me, Egypt?" - to soliloquize despondently. His characteristic anger rises - "have you no ears? I am Antony yet!" - as he orders messengers and re-energizes himself in his finest acting scene, a stirringly sudden rise from despair to valor. D'Silva reveals Antony's gallantry, kneeling 4.11 to bandage a fallen soldier's leg wound, which elevates his 4.13 devastation at Cleopatra's betrayal. D'Silva's Antony angrily pulls a combat knife, then falls to his knees upon a stage ramp, his back to the audience, the stage lit with dappled shadows like autumnal leaves.
The memorably quirky lead performances - both a quality and the bane of the production - subdue some well-played supporting roles. The military leaders - career soldiers in dress uniforms, politicians in modern power suits and black shoes and ties - are led by Lepidus with a flower in his lapel and a confidently played Octavius Caesar wearing a black turtleneck under a sport coat. The reptilian Octavius conducts the 2.2 negotiations with Antony via a series of shouts from opposite sides of the stage, and he wears sunglasses to conceal his 3.2 hangover. Clarence Smith's growling instigator Pompey excels, a seething black man with a handgun leading an intimidating pack of pirate-like rebels in tattoos and fingerless gloves, wearing chains, leather, and bandanas. The soldiers wield automatic assault rifles and appear in the balcony and upon the ladders throughout the playing space. Most notable is Brian Doherty's portrayal of the stalwart Enobarbus, especially in his cynical but apt observations - "he will to his Egyptian dish again" and "the truth should be silent, I almost forgot" - his wry humor at the gaudy 3.13 birthday celebration ("an ass, I'm onion-eyed") and his crushed self-loathing at his own betrayal of his long-time friend and commander, his suicide marked by a dramatic burst of orangish red light.
Boyd's directorial hand is sure, moving the news of the death of Fulvia until after Cleopatra's stagy faint, and separating the 3.2 interaction between Antony and Octavia with a glimpse of Cleopatra's scarlet curiosity, and he deftly blends the story into its modern costuming and setting along with the bursts of live music and sound effects. He handles the 3.8 sea battle in an expressionistic manner, a blue sail billowing across the stage between two open doors as the combatants shift fluidly in dance-like moves and face each other, then launch at one another in a pound of martial drums. The 4.5 land combat sequences are also played stylistically, with soldiers crossing the stage in marching patterns to the hammer of drums. Boyd's decision to minimize the stage fighting lends emphasis to the emotion of the concluding tragedy. Within a bright glare, D'Silva's distraught Antony tears off his vest and pack, aims a pistol at a messenger with news of Cleopatra, and ultimately sags to his knees to die from a stab wound by his own hand. A Roman soldier carries the knife to Octavius 5.1, and a heavy chord strikes with the news of the passing of Antony.
Hunter's Cleopatra, at first seeming as though she is from an entirely different play, becomes an audience favorite with her colorful antics and humorous approach, and she drives the scenes of the fifth act. She and her posse wear white gowns with heavy blue hoods to conceal their identities, but during a blackout, they are suddenly discovered within a spotlight as silenced sniper rifle fire fells Mardian and a messenger, while Octavius and eight gunmen rush the stage. The 5.2 conclusion, albeit well-staged and interesting, would carry more tragic weight with better chemistry between the Latina Cleopatra and her Clooneyesque Antony, and perhaps without the sheer oddity of the portrayals. One of the queen's attendant girls emerges from a trap with a snake basket, and after Cleopatra is ceremoniously wrapped in blue cloth and tenderly crowned, Hunter's Egyptian queen reaches into the basket. She drops a black snake down the front of her dress, jerks as if she is bitten, and expires in a slump, her eyes still open. Octavius concludes Boyd's stylish production with his tardy arrival and promise for Cleopatra to be "buried by Antony."