236. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
British actor Jonathan
Cake, playing Mark Antony, shows plenty of beefcake in the first scene of this
muddled revival of Shakespeare’s ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, in the Anspacher Theatre
at the Public, when he cavorts lasciviously with his sexual obsession,
Cleopatra (Joaquina Kalukango), in what could be the steam baths of Alexandria.
However, despite its being mentioned in the lines, Egypt is nowhere present in
director Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s conception, which is set in a West
Indies colonial outpost, where Cleopatra is the native queen, albeit with what
sounds like a South African accent. (I could find no locale listed in the program, not even in the synopsis, but a press release says it's set in Saint-Domingue--Haiti's former name--on the eve of revolution.) The Romans are French colonists wearing 18th-century,
heavily braided, long coats and tight pants.The idea of setting Shakespeare in such a world is not new, of course, going
back at least to Orson Welles’s “Voodoo” MACBETH of 1936.
Joaquina Kalukango, Jonathan Cake. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Mr. McCraney, like so many directors
who think the way to make their mark on Shakespeare is to abandon all trust on
entering his domain and do something conceptually daring (the “wouldn’t-it-be-fun-if”
school of directing associated with Tyrone Guthrie), has taken many liberties
with the text; his Playbill credit reads: “Edited and Directed by Tarrell Alvin
McCraney.” Shakespeare’s large cast of 34 roles, which normally would include
some doubling or even tripling among the minor characters, has here been cut
exactly in half, with an acting company of 9 handling all 17 parts; five
supporting actors play two or three roles each.
Enobarbus
(Chukwudi Iwuji) has been made a sort of narrator whose duties include
introducing each scene by naming its locale. This, however, is of little help
since there are so many places in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA things are bound to get
confusing in any case. Tom Piper’s spare, three-quarters round, set of pillars,
arches, sheer white curtains, and an upstage wading pool set in front of a
cyclorama remains more or less the same throughout; there’s nary a scenic
effect to tell you when you’re in “Rome,” “Egypt,” or wherever in the empire
the action is supposed to be occurring. One gets the feeling it’s all the same
place, with characters moving freely about in the ancient world on jet planes
that allow them to traverse half the world in hours. There’s a small, raised
area upstage left that serves as Cleopatra’s monument; when the dying Antony
comes to her the tradition is for him to be raised to her higher level before
he passes away. In this staging, however, surely because of sightline problems,
Cleopatra is forced to come down to him instead.
From left: Samuel Collings, Charise Castro Smith, Henry Stram. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Aside
from the colorful blue or red formal coats of the Romans, Mr. Piper’s costumes
are mostly white and simple. Cleopatra, who usually offers a foundation for
imaginative costuming, wears nothing that could be called extraordinary. This
is a visually dull production of a play known for the opportunities it offers
for spectacle. Even Shakespeare’s words, which allow us to imagine brilliant
scenes such as no one could replicate, are given short shrift. Instead of
letting Enobarbus’s famous speech describing Cleopatra floating in her barge
down the Nile have its proper position in the play, when we can savor its vivid
images, Mr. McCraney makes them into a prologue, having Enobarbus open the play
with them as the actors do some insipid mime while they’re spoken. The surprise
of hearing them where they don’t belong is enough to distract from what they’re
saying.
Chukwudi Iwuji. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Physically,
Mr. Cake is a very suitable Antony. He’s got the physique, presence, personality,
and voice to make an ideal Roman hero. But he’s been directed to make his passion
for Cleopatra so all-compelling that, when he’s not carousing or cruelly
ordering a man to be whipped, he appears to have nothing on his mind but
fondling, kissing, touching, humping, and otherwise expressing his sexual
fixation. Of course, his lust is a crucial part of Antony’s problem, the reason
that, despite his military prowess, he runs into so much trouble during this
phase of his life. In Mr. Cake’s often over-acted portrayal, Antony appears little more than a
whiny, petulant, arrogant, jealous, sadistic, joking, frat-boy debauchee, with none of
the tragic stature associated with the role.
Joaquina Kalakungo, Jonathan Cake. Photo: Joan Marcus.
As
Cleopatra, Ms. Kalukango, a diminutive actress in dreadlocks, hits
many notes of anger, sensuality, peevishness, girlishness, ruthlessness, playfulness, and envy, and she displays
considerable movement skill when the play requires her to dance to the rhythmic
music composed by Michael Thurber, but she too never reaches her role’s tragic
dimensions; she remains earthbound and, while colorful, rarely noble.
None
of the supporting players does much to make you notice them very positively, only Antony seems someone who might actually be a warrior (even Enobarbus looks more like a dandy than a soldier),
and the use of the same actors in multiple roles frequently makes it unclear
just who they are. Seeing Cleopatra’s eunuch morph into Eros (Chivas Michael),
the servant who chooses to take his own life rather than kill his master, is
only one of the oddities one must accept. Many directorial choices can be
questioned, including the idea of having the asps that will poison Cleopatra
and her handmaidens brought on in a large, transparent jar of water (not Shakespeare's basket of figs), where
their obvious phoniness is palpable. Cleopatra shoves her breast into the top
of the jar but no asp jumps up to bite her, so perhaps we’re being asked to
believe the very water is poisoned by the tiny serpents’ presence. Or maybe the asps have been replaced by electric eels.
Following
Eros’s poorly staged suicide, Antony follows with an attempt at his own, but
it, too, is bungled, both by the character and the director, inducing giggles
from the audience. (I’m not sure what it was, but a bit of bloody matter fell
from Antony’s shirt after he stabbed himself and remained on the floor for the
rest of the play.) Later, after Antony lies dead, we’re reminded of the West
Indies milieu by the Soothsayer (Mr. Michael) entering and doing some mumbo
jumbo, after which Antony and Eros rise like zombies and walk off into the upstage
wading pool. Other zombies follow later. And at the conclusion, after a funeral song and dance in their honor, the dead
Antony and Cleopatra, now cleaned up and all in white, dance slowly in the
wading pool.
I
think, in fact, we should remember this two hour and 45 minute production as the “Zombie” ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA. It takes a living play and transforms it into one of the living
dead.
