Speak the speech, I pray you

Independant on Sunday 28th October 1998

Robert Butler

 

The new Antony and Cleopatra, with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman, is tough to follow. Across 10 years and two continents, we struggle on: at moments of high emotion, or when the set is on the move, or actors have to face upstage, or yet another relative clause sneaks in before the end of a speech, the consonants vanish, and we are left with empty vowels. It sets the mind racing - mainly backwards. Sorry, you think, what was that they just said?

The National's dream team of Mirren and Rickman has delivered the punters (sold out before previews), but not the goods. The techniques of stage and screen look very distinct. A master of the close-up, voice-over and reaction shot, Rickman is stumped in the Olivier; unable to find the energy to spin iambic pentameters in front of 1,000 people. His nasal slur rises and falls mainly in volume. I had one of the best seats in the Olivier. I had just read the play. And I was looking for the surtitles.

Some of them can do it; as Enobarbus, Antony's right-hand man, Finbar Lynch hangs on tight to his consonants. The best verse speaker in the company, this wiry, cranial figure is brisk and ironic. Thanks to him, we know how Antony met Cleopatra, and what qualities she possesses. Lynch is joined, most of the time, by Samuel West's prissy, pallid Octavius. He can spell out Antony's exploits in Modena, and list, across seven lines, without a fluff, the names of Antony's new allies.

Mirren's mercurial Cleopatra swings between the two. Sometimes, turning on a sixpence between emotions, she can be hilariously precise at portraying the actressy queen. But when losing her rag with messengers, she slips across and joins the music makers. Only in the candlelit last act, as she prepares for her death, does her statuesque directness win us over.

Early on, director Sean Mathias spreads out rugs, cushions, courtiers and silver plates stacked with fruit. Only Antony and Cleopatra isn't a feast for the eyes. Its richness lies in its reported speech. The cast has to lead us into the verse, so that we can share in the gossip and flashbacks.

With 40 scenes, the changes ought to have been swift. Tim Hatley's earthen wall of slats slides monotonously up and down. The one element that's always audible is the clanking music in the scene changes. Actors stand and wait for the set to stop moving and the music to end. Awful.

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