Antony and Cleopatra

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

last night, we (Jon, shermarama, cjwatson, Benedict and I) went to see Antony and Cleopatra performed by the RSC.

It wasn't a play I'd known anything about beforehand, and I do not think it will ever become one of my favourites. I still vastly prefer Julius Cӕsar, for example.

Cleopatra seemed too... insane, selfish and neurotic to have held onto an empire. Antony seemed more flighty and less stable than in Julia Cӕsar. I am told that these are aspects of the play rather than direction.

Direction generally was very good; I'd always rather see a play with good direction and bad acting than the other way around. I liked the use of space and light, I liked the music, and I particularly liked the way the play started slowly and built up pace until BAMM complete silence after Cleopatra's death. I have a bit of a thing about pace; bad pace can completely ruin a production for me.

Acting; well, I particularly liked the actress playing Iras, Emma Jay Thomas. She utterly fitted her part, and had a grace in movement which made it seem much more real. Patrick Stewart as Antony, however, was a complete disappointment; I could barely understand a word he said, I think because of poor diction rather than poor projection.

All in all, worth seeing, but I'll not go to see Patrick Stewart perform again.

Comments

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I used to like Patrick Steward on StarTrek, but I suppose television is different. Do you suppose he's got into bad habits?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I was the only one of our group that noticed a problem. Colin said he thought it might have worked better if we'd been sitting lower down; we were quite high up.

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

Perhaps: still I'm looking forward to going to the theatre when the children are older (we had a flyer for Magic Flute yesterday in the post). Next year we are going to the pantomime: the Oldham Coliseum has a very good reputation, and tickets are sold a year in advance, so I suppose we'd better some soon.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

It is very nice being able to take Benedict to the theatre. He loves the Magic Flute, and has done since he was not much older than Hannah, strangely enough. Maybe opera would be more fun for them?

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

But a bit long, at 3 hours? Sam did like Fille Mal Gardee that they had on the television. He dipped in and out of it. It was very good, we all liked it (but think that was pre-Hannah