Reviews
Reviews
User Review: 11Jan01: Pimlott's torpid production misses the play's hurtling momentum. It ignores the play's crucial sense of lovers so smitten by passion that it loses them reason, empires, alliances and life itself. Alan Bates has long specialised in giving good irony and Miss de la Tour is admired for her brilliant line in camp mockery and hauteur. So this mercurial Cleopatra, all dressed up in gold, azure blue and blazing temperament relishes and conveys the queen's wit - and more. The play's political aspects are still faint-heartedly done. Only Guy Henry's threatening Octavius keeps up the political edge. It is Malcolm Storry's self-serving Enobarbus, racked by self-disgust, who sounds the most heartfelt notes in this perverse production. User Reviews
Evening Standard (11Jan01): Pimlott's torpid production misses the play's hurtling momentum. It ignores the play's crucial sense of lovers so smitten by passion that it loses them reason, empires, alliances and life itself. Alan Bates has long specialised in giving good irony and Miss de la Tour is admired for her brilliant line in camp mockery and hauteur. So this mercurial Cleopatra, all dressed up in gold, azure blue and blazing temperament relishes and conveys the queen's wit - and more. The play's political aspects are still faint-heartedly done. Only Guy Henry's threatening Octavius keeps up the political edge. It is Malcolm Storry's self-serving Enobarbus, racked by self-disgust, who sounds the most heartfelt notes in this perverse production.
Antony and Cleopatra tells of the overwhelming passions of two magnetic personalities who hold the destiny of a third of the world in their hands. Antony is a warrior and a lover, torn between his military duties and the erotic charms of the sensuous Egyptian court. At the heart is Cleopatra. "Serpent of old Nile", storym and unpredictable. Their love eventually triumphs with their noble deaths, but not before all else is lost.
