Love in Idleness

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 22 April 2017

Trevor Nunn directs Eve Best as Olivia Brown, Anthony Head as Sir John Fletcher, Edward Bluemel as Olivia's son Michael and Helen George as Sir John's estranged wife Diana in a wonderful revival of Terrance Rattigan's wartime comedy, with sets designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis.

The play opens in a swank apartment with Olivia on the telephone gushingly trying to arrange a dinner party, persuading a series of guests to attend on each other's accounts. Eve Best excels at this fast-paced society manner, the words pouring out persuasively with hardly a breath taken. Yet we are soon aware that the situation is not exactly straightforward. She answers telephone calls a little warily, pretending anonymity until she knows who is calling; and she seems inept at taking in an important message for Sir John Fletcher, a minister in Churchill's War Cabinet. It transpires that Sir John has installed Olivia in the flat; their romantic involvement is clearly passionate but social respectability is denied them as Sir John cannot afford the scandal of divorce while in the Cabinet.

Antony and Cleopatra

by William Shakespeare

filmed live performance from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre seen on 18 June 2015

This 2014 production was directed by Jonathan Munby and stars Eve Best as Cleopatra, Clive Wood as Mark Antony, Jolyon Coy as Octavius Caesar and Phil Daniels as Enobarbus.

The play criss-crosses the ancient world, from Egypt (Alexandria) to Rome, Sicily and the western shores of Greece (Actium), and dramatises the tumultuous relationship between Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, and Mark Antony, one of the three Roman leaders whose triumvirate was established after the wars following the death of Julius Caesar. The triumvir Lepidus is the weakest of the three, and so the military and political struggle for dominance in Rome becomes intensified in the personal animosity between Antony and the young Octavius Caesar.