Anthony and Cleopatra

Yahoo News 24th October 1998

THE HYPE

"It's the first National Theatre production to sell out its entire run before the first preview." National Theatre spokeswoman.

THE CRITIC

"You can't get in but frankly I wouldn't worry. It struck me as a duff evening despite its star content." Robert Gore-Langton, Daily Express.

THE HYPE

" Subtly, quietly, the theatre has become damned sexy . Soon, Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman will sex up the National as Antony and Cleopatra." (Evening Standard, 7 October).

THE CRITIC

"They [Rickman and Mirren] rose to erotic ardour last night with little more enthusiasm than a pair of glumly non-mating pandas at London Zoo, coaxed to do their duty." (Evening Standard, 21 October).

THE HYPE

"Together, they [Rickman and Mirren] make the most compelling duo in one of literature's greatest love stories since Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made their exotic but . flawed film version." (Mail On Sunday, 23 August)

THE CRITIC

Rickman's rumpled, woebegone Antony sometimes left me feeling that Eeyore had been miscast as Tigger . I did not feel a single volt of sexual electricity between [Mirren and Rickman]." (Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 21 October)

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