Antony and Cleopatra, The Globe: Eve Best, Clive Wood, directed by Jonathan Munby

Rome, after Julius Ceasar, is ruled by a triumvirate: Lepidus, Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony; united by hatred for their common enemy Pompey. Antony, distracted by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, is recalled to Rome as Pompey’s popularity increases, and his wife, Fulvia dies. Thus ensues scenes of hostilities and counter-hostilities in which Shakespeare plays out a real-politik for the beloved, but dead Queen Elizabeth, and the emergent Jacobean dynasty, led by James VI of Scotland. 

Cleopatra (Eve Best) is an idealised figurehead, standing for everything exotic and other. In director Jonathan Munby’s resourceful production she eats fruit and is dressed in loose-flowing white and gold. Best’s tan and hair, all sun-kissed highlights, suggest Essex Laddette, but in this outlandishness are the seeds of a very British kind of Zenophobia. Where Rome is civil, Egypt is not; where governance is sober and male; sensuality is female. 

There's a touch of the Swash-Buckler to Best's Cleopatra, which takes some getting used to; more Pirates-of-the-Carribean Elizabeth Swann than Kohl-lined Elizabeth Taylor. Best's triumph is in the second half, matched by a superior Clive Wood, where the tenor of the drama demands a coherent presentation. 'I dreamt of Antony' is delivered in a deliberate low-key.

The gallows humour at the drama's critical point is audacious. If the play’s message is about accommodating desire, like Euripides’ The Bacchae, then it sits uncomfortably with the deaths of Cleopatra’s retinue at the end. Yet it is erroneous to review exclusively with 21^st century eyes; best to ‘keep yourself within yourself.’ Maybe Antony and Cleopatra is just a play about an old queen and a new king.

Yet Shakespeare’s lines burgeon with passion and poetry: Enobarbus’ extended ship metaphor as he describes Cleopatra ’age cannot wither her’ or Cleopatra’s of Antony ‘his legs bestrid the ocean’ or the waspish description of Octavia as ‘dull-tongued and dwarfish.’ In these instances The Globe is the most perfect place to be; communally held moments for a playwright ‘unparalleled.’