Mirren is a true Queen of the Nile

The Daily Mail October 23rd 1998

Michael Coveney

There may indeed be nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. But Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren - dream casting, or what? - will do for now.

The greatest of Shakespeare's and political tragedies so often disappoints in the theatre. But rarely have I seen it so flamboyantly staged or so movingly acted as in this new revival in the National's Olivier arena.

Mirren has marked her career with this role. She came to notice as a teenage Cleo with the National Youth Theatre. Fifteen years ago she was fast and fiery opposite Michael Gambon in a small-scale RSC version.

She also had those old immortal longings with a chip basket on her head. Now, in the glorious and not so suspect prime of her career, she adds the full range of easy authority and animal sensuality.

She is both queen and tigress, a voluptuous serpent of old Nile who plays a kingdom for a love affair. She comes out on top in beautiful death, a golden Egyptian mummy with a killer baby adder at her breast.

Rickman's Mark Antony is a spineless poet of a warrior, sleepwalking to his doom in a candlelit monument and caught with tragic splendour in a mad rush of indecision and windswept dolour.

This wonderful affair is set in relief against a burnished set of a cratered map, picked out on Tim Hatley's design on a vast half moon. Sean Mathias, the director, stages the play with fluent choreography, stylised battles, a constant thrumming undertow of James Wood's tactful music and a real eye for the power of small parts. Those catching the eye include Katia Caballero's beautiful Octavia, whom Antony marries for expediency, Leo Ringer's lithe Eros and Henry Ian Cusick's beautifully-spoken Dolabella. Samuel West is a suitably priggish Octavius, Raad Rawi an almost funny Lepidus. T

he galley scene is the one failure of the evening.

The eight-week run is sold out. You can queue for on-the-day tickets in the morning, or hope for returns in the afternoon. And then Broadway might beckon. Trevor Nunn should be lobbied to keep the show here.

 

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