Antony and Cleopatra

No, if you want spectacle, get the Taylor/Burton and forget about Shakespeare. This DVD wins on the Royal Shakespeare Company's deep bench and Trevor Nunn's meticulous direction. All do well with the verse, and there is none of the glaring miscasting that strangles the BBC version from 1981.

Richard Johnson was briefly married to Kim Novak. He also turned down the role of James Bond because he didn't want to be trapped in a long term contract. Here he hides his good looks behind a thick beard, and if he is not as grand as Antony might be, he's certainly got most of it right. Janet Suzman braves the considerable difficulties of Cleopatra without ever becoming unbearable, which you can't say of her competition. Octavius is played by Corin Redgrave, who once again projects his father's perpetual air of irritable grievance minus the family charm.

Patrick Stewart as Enobarbus pounds his competition to dust, and Ben Kingsley and Tim Pigott-Smith in minor roles are testimony to the strength of the company. Philip Locke and Derek Godfrey also make strong impressions.

This version is shot entirely in a TV studio, now a lost and unfamiliar art form. There are virtually no constructed sets. The actors are usually in limbo, with perhaps some waving gauzes, or diffusion on the lens. This may confuse some viewers who need literal settings, but it frees the rest of us to concentrate on the people, the plot and the poetry. Shakespeare is not about architecture; the movies do that better.

Until the Caedmon audio recording with Anthony Quayle and Pamela Brown resurfaces, this DVD is the best way to absorb a packaged version of Shakespeare's play.

First the good: this production is traditional: set in Ancient Rome, with appropriate costumes. Otherwise, it stank. Almost none of the actors could deliver a Shakespeare line. In Anthony and Cleopatra, some lines are rhymes, some are in blank pentameter, and some are in prose. Here it hardly mattered, since the director and actors had no respect for words. The two leads were the worst offenders. Cleopatra (Janet Suzman) was light-weight, shrill, cheap -- far from regal. She would howl out a word or two from a line, letting all the other words fall by the wayside. Always she was mugging for the camera, with limited facial expressions to mug with. She seemed spiteful, silly, and quite frankly unattractive. Anthony was almost as bad, in different ways. He tried to invest almost every line with gut-wrenching emotion -- bawling out line after line, that should simply have been spoken. With lines blurted out, it was hard to understand what was happening, except that the actors were terribly emotional about something or other. Whenever someone told a joke, and there is a lot of humor in A&P, the actors would laugh and laugh. Not funny. It's we, the audience, who ought to do the laughing. None of the poetry came through. The famous description of Cleopatra by Enobarbus ("Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety....") got lost in the noise. There are no subtitles -- which might have helped. Than again, it might have been distracting to see the lines the actors were supposed to be speaking, in contract to what they were actually yelling out or whispering.

I was in high school when I saw this version of "Antony and Cleopatra" on the short-lived, occasional "ABC Theatre" on the US ABC television network. I had read Shakespeare in English Literature class, of course, and had even attended some local productions of Shakespeare plays, but seeing this production totally changed my view of the Bard, even theatre in general. This was the first time I ever watched a play and felt as if I was watching something real, viewing snippets of life in progress. The actors weren't mouthing lines and feigning emotions - they were real and they believed, and that made me believe as well.

Perhaps the intervening years have affected my memory, dimming the details, but I cannot forget the awe I felt watching Patrick Stewart's Enobarbus. When I had read the play in school, Enobarbus was a minor character, and his speeches weren't important. Stewart's performance changed that. Now the role was central, and his descent from cheer to madness was a mirror of his world. Cleopatra's knowing chuckle as she spoke of her "salad days" was a lament as well a whimsey.

At that age, I may have been ripe for a change in my world view, but I cannot deny that it was "Antony and Cleopatra" that provided it. Ever since I have compared my response to a performance to that I felt from this production. Patrick Stewart has certainly gone on to "bigger and better" things in the last quarter century, but for me he'll always be Enobarbus, the man who defined Shakespeare for me.

Antony and Cleopatra (1974) follows the relationship of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra.It dates from the time of the Parthian war to Cleopatra's suicide with a snake.William Shakespeare is the author of the play this movie is based on.He is believed to have written that around 1606-1607.I read the play a little while before I borrowed the VHS from the library.It's not the finest works by the Bard but good anyway.This TV movie is something very average.It works mainly because of the fine performances the actors give.There's some strength in the performance by Richard Johnson who plays Marc Antony.Janet Suzman is wonderful as the Queen of Eqypt.Patrick Stewart is really good as Enobarbus.The way he turns and talks straight to camera is just magnificent.It's also a real treat to see the young Ben Kingsley as Thidias.The drama works from time to time.There's a lot of that in the end.So this was worth seeing.

Though the acting from the Royal Shakespeare company is first rate, this version of Antony and Cleopatra is little more than a photographed stage play. And a bit long for the cinema at that.

The title roles are played well by Richard Johnson and Janet Suzman. The story has been told three times in contemporary verse in the cinema by Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, and Elizabeth Taylor as the seductive Queen of Egypt who tried to bend one too many conquerors to her will by use of her legendary charms.

William Shakespeare's Mark Antony was a principal character in two of his plays, Julius Caesar where he skillfully picked up the leadership of his late patriarch Caesar and routed the conspirators who assassinated the legendary conqueror.

To give legitimacy to his enterprise, Antony was forced into partnership with Octavian Caesar, Julius's grandnephew and a legion commander Lepidus made the triumvir of three. This play is a story of the dissolution of that partnership caused in no small part by Cleopatra.

Sex may have more a part in Antony and Cleopatra than in any other work of Shakespeare. Historians might very well argue that Mark Antony was using Cleopatra as his entrée to gaining alliances with various Roman dependencies in a power play against Octavian. But Shakespeare was no doubt titillating his 16th century audience with the tales of Cleopatra's erotic technique. Ahenobarbus, Antony's good friend played here by Patrick Stewart, says that while Octavia's sister's a pretty thing, when you get entangled with Cleopatra, she's so good that men are never satisfied, they keep hungering for more.

So that's the reason why Antony instead of tending to business and keeping an eye on Octavian gradually loses support in Rome where it really counts. The guy who was so shrewd in Julius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra is just a love struck fool. It's the basis for his tragedy.

As for Cleopatra, three times wasn't the charm. Julius Caesar and Mark Antony may have succumbed although there is debate about who was using who. But in Octavian as played here by Corin Redgrave is all about business.

I was interested in the difference between Ahenobarbus in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra which starred Claudette Colbert and the way Shakespeare writes him and Stewart plays him. In the DeMille film, Ahenobarbus is played by C. Aubrey Smith as a stout old soldier who finds it a matter of conscience to leave Antony and support his beloved Roman Empire which he sees embodied now in Octavian. Patrick Stewart's Ahenobarbus is far more of an opportunist who makes a calculated move at the right time.

The money here was spent on talent with the people mentioned and the others in the cast from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Down the cast list you'll find Ben Kingsley in a minor role. Look also for a very touching performance by Rosemary McHale as Charmian, Cleopatra's faithful handmaiden who makes the last journey with her.

This version of Antony and Cleopatra is not a movie per se, it lacks the production values of one. The Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra had the spectacle to go with the acting. This one succeeds on talent alone.