Antony and Cleopatra Chicago Shakespeare Theater
There’s nothing remotely punk about the Chicago Shakespeare Theater now—after all, punk doesn’t pay the bills. And there’s nothing sassy or slapdash about the new venue’s inaugural production, Gaines’s staging of Antony and Cleopatra. Unfortunately there’s little that’s provocative either, though the show has stylishness to spare. Sleek, well paced, technically impressive, this Antony and Cleopatra is a thoroughly competent piece of stagecraft that nevertheless lacks excitement, poetic beauty, and tragic depth.
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Written around 1606, Antony and Cleopatra is daunting even by Shakespearean standards, a sprawling piece of storytelling that cuts back and forth between the martial, macho imperial center of Rome and the languid, lusty Egyptian capital of Alexandria. The warrior Marc Antony, boon companion of the recently assassinated Julius Caesar, has followed in his dead friend’s footsteps not only by assuming leadership of Rome in partnership with Caesar’s heir, Octavius, but by becoming the lover of Caesar’s former mistress, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Seduced by her beauty and wit and by the indolent pleasures of her court, Antony has grown disastrously inattentive to his duties as one of Rome’s ruling triumvirate, whose third member, Lepidus, is soon swallowed up by the escalating antagonism between Antony and Octavius.
Part tragedy and part comedy, part history play and part meditation on the ephemerality of flesh and the eternity of spirit, Antony and Cleopatra covers huge emotional ground—and demands leads who can bridge the play’s dramatic extremes. Kevin Gudahl—an actor of extraordinary vocal and physical resources—makes a grand and fiery Antony in the play’s first act, and if he had a partner of equal strength the production could have approached the script’s titanic heights. But Lisa Dodson is simply out of her depth as Cleopatra. A competent character actress, she’s devoid of mystery and utterly lacking in genuine eroticism, coming off smirky when she should be seductive, snippy when she should be imperious, and smug when she should be serene. Cleopatra’s quicksilver mood changes here seem arbitrary choices rather than deep-rooted signs of psychological complexity; she’s described by Enobarbus as a woman of “infinite variety,” but Dodson’s variety is decidedly finite. Worst of all, she and Gudahl never establish any credible connection despite their frequent displays of pawing and writhing; their lifeless, mechanical physical interaction doesn’t lay the emotional groundwork for us to see their deaths as a victory rather than defeat.
The show’s stark, dark design supports rather than dominates the verbal interplay. James Noone’s set is essentially bare, an empty thrust stage leading to a steep stairway upstage; Christopher Akerlind’s lighting pinpoints some key moments and casts others in moody shadow; Nan Cibula-Jenkins’s basic black costumes have silver accents for the rigid Romans and warmer gold touches for the sensual Egyptians. (Antony, torn between two cultures, wears a black and silver cloak and a gold breastplate.) Alaric Jans’s incidental music veers a bit too close to film soundtrack cliches—rattling drums and trumpet fanfares for the Romans, plucked strings and whispering wind chimes for the Egyptians—at once recalling and paling in comparison to Alex North’s magnificent score for the Elizabeth Taylor movie Cleopatra. But in general the production suggests period pageantry without succumbing to ersatz-Hollywood glitz. A tight-formation procession of Roman military leaders marching two by two down the stairway benefits from the elegant plainness of the men’s trimly tailored uniforms, while Cleopatra’s death scene is memorably simple: the queen sits on her throne beneath two arching golden rods—a reminder that pyramids, the traditional tombs of pharaohs, were also their gateway to everlasting life.
