by William Shakespeare
seen at the Barbican Theatre on 6 January 2018
Part of the RSC's Rome MMXVII season, this play is directed by Iqbal Khan and features Josette Simon as Cleopatra, Antony Byrne as Mark Antony, Ben Allen as Octavius Caesar and Andre Woodall as Enobarbus. It is interesting, but in the event justified, that the characters common to both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra - namely, Antony himself and the other triumvirs Octavius and Lepidus - are played by different actors in the two productions, though many of the supporting cast appear in both.
Robert Innes Hopkins designed both productions, giving a sense of visual unity while expanding the palette, as it were, to include the Egyptian scenes, their general sensuousness signified by a large draped curtain to offset the sterner vertical and horizontal lines of Rome, and the occasional appearance of large cat statues. But, with a different director, even if the visual presentation was broadly related, the overall approach was inevitably different, most notably in the sound world in which the brass and percussion of the earlier play are here supplemented by (electric) guitar and saxaphone.
