Antony and Cleopatra
Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep until 28 August
In this deplorable new production, it is not just the great general Antony who’s taken leave of his senses but Michael Boyd, its director and generalissimo of the RSC, too. In prospect, the casting of the diminutive character actor Kathryn Hunter as the serpent and seductress of Old Nile always seemed weird, if not actually crazy. In practice, it is an unmitigated disaster. It is doubtless some kind of record that Hunter is playing both the Fool in Lear and Cleopatra in the same season. But this is a foolishness too far, and it does not stop there.
Hunter is an accomplished director and an actor of prodigious, protean skills. Her wiry physique and rubbery face have permitted astonishing assumptions (Richard III, Lear, Kafka’s Monkey), but Cleopatra was never going to be one of them.
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