Antony’s (Kaya McRuer, ‘17) jaw is stronger than yours. It must be, because she spends the duration of The Stanford Shakespeare Company’s Antony & Cleopatra carefully clenching it, shifting it to form a calculating smirk, and ensuring it remains tense even when she’s grinning with veritable glee. Her movements are precise, expressive and slightly disarming — not unlike the production as a whole.
Antony and Cleopatra (Melanie Arnold, ‘16) are a commanding duo. Though immensely wealthy leaders of the world, they’re surprisingly like us in their struggle to determine where and to whom their obligations lie. We watch as they learn that, as Cleopatra’s attendant Mardian (Heather Connelly, ‘18), remarks, “Her fortunes mingled with thine entirely.” Their fortunes, monetarily and otherwise, are inextricably intertwined, and they must grapple with whether their duties and desires can co-exist.
In a show dominated almost exclusively by male roles, a show that, like all Shakespeare, was once performed by an exclusively male cast, director Rayna Smith’s choice of dual female leads draws immediate attention. The play is concerned with what it means to possess power — globally, interpersonally, over one’s life — and the two female leads force us to consider what qualities of power are implicitly associated with maleness. When Cleopatra launched into one of her contradictory tirades, executed with a perfect degree of volatility by an adept Arnold, I found myself tempted to label her manipulative and melodramatic. Yet perhaps these classifications were a product of the fact that I expected her to be the “female” half of the duo. Arnold’s Cleopatra is not quietly powerful in the way smart women are expected to be, but instead intense and intimidating — categorizations more traditionally applied to men. In every scene, but especially on stage together, McRuer and Arnold ask us to consider who possesses the power and why.
The talent of the company as a collective is evident in the cast’s ability to communicate a particularly convoluted Shakespearean tale, wrought with complicated language and dozens of characters, with nuance and charm. Though at times the show drags on, many of the more tedious scenes are revitalized by noteworthy moments from the supporting cast: a well-timed giggle from Iras (Davis Leonard, ‘19), an exasperated sigh from a overly-patient Charmian (Eva Borgwardt, ‘19). Most impressively, the supporting cast expertly uses tone and body language to elucidate the hard-to-catch details that are lost in complicated moments of the script.
Smith’s clever direction is evident in how her cast takes up space. In a play in which the words are so complex that the audience’s focus must always be on deciphering the language, she ensures that bodies tell an equal portion of the story. Smith creates a world in which bodies are integral to meaning, thereby forcing you pay attention to knees and elbows, to eyebrows and awkward gaits. Body language is a tool used not only to indicate power, but also to demonstrate character. Even if you’re lost in the intricacies of the plot, the supporting cast members’ body language keeps you emotionally aware.
Antony & Cleopatra is funny, but not in a uniform way. There are comedic bits — when Mardian stands with water dripping down her face and onto her costume (which she has to wear in later scenes) looking comedically miserable and cold, when a messenger (Fiona Maguire, ‘19) attempts to figure out how to tell Cleopatra what she wants to hear about Antony’s new wife — but there is quiet humor, too. The show is humorous in many of the subtle and sometimes dark ways that real life is funny. We may live in a world that looks little like 20 BC Alexandria and Rome, but stripped down, our obstacles don’t look too different.
In Shakespearean tragedies, characters sometimes merely serve the purposes of dying or killing. In Antony & Cleopatra the characters, from a surprisingly thoughtful Caesar (Patrick O’Hare, ‘17) to an exceedingly drunk Domitius (Francesca Lupia, ‘19), have vibrant lives full of contradictions, drunken escapades, intense friendships and all-consuming love.
Antony & Cleopatra is full of moments of unrestrained joy and unrestricted indulgence. The company works hard (special shout out to first-time stage manager, Rachel Jorgensen) and it’s hard not to walk about feeling slightly unsettled but thoroughly impressed.
Read a synopsis before you go so you can focus on the beautiful military costumes and fun fight choreography instead of who everyone is. Don’t worry about spoilers: everyone dies.
Antony & Cleopatra runs February 24 through 27 in Elliot Programming Center.
Photos courtesy of Frank Chen
(’18, Symbolic Systems, Performance Editor) cannot find her headphones, but can start >64% of anecdotes with “so I was listening to this podcast…” She mostly enjoys even years because the Giants win the World Series, but will show up for the odd ones if there’s good coffee.