tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post6713307653096536417..comments2024-02-06T23:18:42.946-08:00Comments on Shakespeare Calling: Does Anybody Like Antony and Cleopatra?Ruby Jandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12107354716859269385noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-54252360541228880352018-11-28T01:28:32.635-08:002018-11-28T01:28:32.635-08:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12869134679395026030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-57382697592915786252014-07-07T03:15:20.825-07:002014-07-07T03:15:20.825-07:00Now I've read your comment again after having ...Now I've read your comment again after having seen the play. You’ve stirred my curiosity, both about the scholars you refer to, and your comments in general. I have begun to realize – maybe I always knew – that this is a very complex play. I’m quite sure I’m not finished with it yet!<br />Ruby Jandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12107354716859269385noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-26721687990359581532014-07-07T03:13:38.593-07:002014-07-07T03:13:38.593-07:00Nor have I seen this though would very much like t...Nor have I seen this though would very much like to. Trevor Nunn productions are always worth seeing! Patrick Stewart, too, and I agree that the character of Octavius deserves a good performance.Ruby Jandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12107354716859269385noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-30183512387631705462014-07-07T03:11:26.860-07:002014-07-07T03:11:26.860-07:00Haven't seen this one but now that we have a s...Haven't seen this one but now that we have a smart TV maybe we'll find it. I'd like to see it though I share your scepticism to Charlton Heston.Ruby Jandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12107354716859269385noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-17547306477364359772014-06-30T03:05:00.160-07:002014-06-30T03:05:00.160-07:001981, BBC. Well, I like this one better than most,...1981, BBC. Well, I like this one better than most, but, all the same, it is the worst of the bunch. Perhaps if I’d seen it first I might have found it more satisfying. Part of the problem is the production. The sets are passable, but the costumes are impossibly ugly. It’s hard to ignore them, and when Tony and Cleo are dressed in some sort of half-Elizabethan, half-modernist kitsch, it’s hard to take them seriously. <br /><br />Blakely is not a bad Antony, especially in his more robust moments where he manages to infuse the poetry with elemental passion without ruining it. But this is not a performance I would rank with his superb Kent in “Lear” (1983). Lapotaire also has her fine moments, especially in the final scene, but on the whole she makes Cleo just a little too pathetic for my taste. You put it very well: “weepy and hysterical”. Worst of all, if there is any chemistry between them, I haven’t noticed it. The rest is even worse. Ian Charleson is a melodramatic Octavius, just a little short of character assassination. Emrys James is the dullest Enobarbus imaginable.<br /><br />Last but not least, cuts are few but always questionable. Why cutting half of Enobarbus’ short comment about the two chaps? The omitted part - “And throw between them all the food thou hast, / They'll grind the one the other” - complements the rest to perfection. It’s an absurd cut.<br />Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16093061780494131162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-42769201412270255162014-06-30T02:33:53.358-07:002014-06-30T02:33:53.358-07:001974, directed by Jon Scofield, based on Trevor Nu...1974, directed by Jon Scofield, based on Trevor Nunn's RSC production. This is the best of the bunch. By far. It is filmed theatre, much like the BBC version but infinitely superior to it. The costumes are modest but evocative. Sets there are none, but lightning is wonderfully atmospheric; it’s almost a character of its own, “beaten gold” for Egypt, bright white for Rome. The only minor defect, purely visually, is the rough editing, but though a bit weird, it is seldom annoying. Anyway, any Shakespearean movie/film/theatre production must stand or fall on the acting alone.<br /><br />So far as I'm concerned, great Shakespearean acting doesn't get much better than this. Richard Johnson and Janet Suzman are very nearly perfect as Tony and Cleo. Both convey the complexity and the subtlety of the characters with stunning vividness and verisimilitude. Suzman is especially remarkable. She is hot, she is cold, she is dreamy, she is blunt, she is arrogant, vain, seductive, silly, commanding, vulnerable. She's everything - or nearly everything - Will's Cleo should be. Patrick Stewart is a fine Enobarbus, but lightweight compared to Eric Porter. Not to forget Octavius (the most often underestimated character in the play), Corin Redgrave gives a beautiful performance. That cold disdain, that implacable contempt for Antony's Alexandrian revels so characteristic of Octavius is given here its greatest expression on screen.<br /><br />At about 2 hours and 40 minutes, this is a relatively uncut version. Relatively. The oddest missing link is Pompey: the poor guy is entirely erased. 'Tis a pity, it makes the drinking party much less effective. Otherwise, however, the dialogue does feel like Shakespeare, unlike Heston's version where it feels like Hollywood pure and simple. Charming bonus: a very young Ben Kingsley as Thidias.<br />Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16093061780494131162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-26567728366986660112014-06-30T02:28:59.856-07:002014-06-30T02:28:59.856-07:00As usual - as always - it took much longer to sort...As usual - as always - it took much longer to sort out my thoughts than I thought, partly because I decided I should read and see "Julius Caesar" in between, partly because all movies took multiple viewings, above all because I'm incredibly lazy. Anyway, three movie versions, in chronological order.<br /><br />1972, Charlton Heston's one-man show. Judah Ben-Hur is not just Antony here, but director and co-screenwriter as well. The adaptation has some nice original touches (e.g. the first meeting between Antony and Octavius is coupled with gladiatorial combat, the opening lines are put in Enobarbus' mouth), but the cuts are more than substantial and much to disadvantage of both the poetry and the characters (e.g. Cleo's sarcastic reference to the messengers in the first scene is entirely missing, much of the final scene is cut; the text in virtually all scenes is ruthlessly butchered). Visually, it's a splendid exotic extravaganza, with a good deal of outdoor scenes, lavish sets and costumes, and epic battles; an honest attempt to outdo the Taylor-Burton epic with some 30 times smaller budget.<br /><br />I'm no great fan of Charlton Heston, but I like him well enough to appreciate his performance here. I don't know why reviewers often denounce him as hammy. Besides, there is a good deal of ham (and some eggs as well) in Antony, isn't there? I enjoy Heston's roaring "Let Rome in Tiber melt!", accompanied with the tearing of a pearl necklace, and on the whole is convincing and sometimes even moving. In any case, he does a much better job than Hildegard Neil as Cleopatra. She alternates between vapid and hysterical, mechanically chanting her lines all the time, exuding not a trace of the sensual charm that must be part and parcel of Cleo. John Castle has been much praised by the mighty reviewers online, but his Octavius strikes me as too wooden, not a man, not even an actor playing a part, but a speaking mannequin. Easily the finest performance in the whole movie is Eric Porter's as Enobarbus. Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Porter escapes the trap that Enobarbuses from later movies readily fall into, namely making the character too buffoonish.<br /><br />Charming bonus: the young Jane Lapotaire as Charmian, a much better achievement than her Cleopatra a decade later. Personal "oh yeah him/her" reaction: Julian Glover as Proculeius; I thought really hard about this one, and finally, without the help of IMDb I'm pleased to say, I nailed him: Walter Donovan in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". <br /><br />And one last note as regards cuts. One must be very careful because the movie seems to exist in several very different versions. I first saw some Spanish DVD which was only 123 minutes long, but later got hold of another version - 25 minutes longer! So the appalling cuts may not always be thanks to Heston and co. <br />Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16093061780494131162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-50741009897529414172014-06-09T03:00:08.826-07:002014-06-09T03:00:08.826-07:00Thank you for this most interesting comment! Just...Thank you for this most interesting comment! Just when I needed it - we're off to see the play at the Globe and I will comment more thoroughly when next on line. We're re-reading it now and I must admit I'm getting more into it this time and am quite prepared to like the Globe production very much.<br />So until next time...Ruby Jandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12107354716859269385noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3763524608484932801.post-72359247889001271922014-06-09T01:29:29.098-07:002014-06-09T01:29:29.098-07:00Since an inferior Wordsworth Classics edition from...Since an inferior Wordsworth Classics edition from 1993 happened to be in my hands, I chose this play to perform a strange experiment: reading Shakespeare without any notes whatsoever. Not the best play for such a stunt, is it? I barely managed to follow the plot and grasp the main outlines of the characters. I was sufficiently interested, however, to pursue re-reading with copious notes. It's been growing on me ever since (in the last two or three weeks that is).<br /><br />Enough preliminary nonsense, to answer your question right away. Yes, I do like "Antony and Cleopatra" as a play and Tony and Cleo as characters. Very real, very alive, very compelling. Deeply flawed of course, but aren't we all? Terribly irritating now and then, but aren't most of us so? <br /><br />The main part of their tragedy, as I see it, is not Antony's so-called degradation into a "dotting mallard" or Cleopatra's into the Grand Seducer and the Grand Manipulator, but the fact that they, unlike Romeo and Juliet, never did enjoy their love. Rather, it's a case study of mutual obsession and mental torture. Only when death finally came did they comprehend what bliss it might have been. So, in a way, death is positive and that is, I think, why the ending is not engulfed in gloomy pessimism, as in the other great tragedies, but seems elated and inspirational. I, for one, consider "A&C" quite on par with the Big Four. It's just different - which makes comparisons futile.<br /><br />Like you, I turned to the authorities, curious to see what they can offer. Bloom I found boring - and missing the point completely. Harold Goddard I found brilliant. He argues that those, like Bloom, who think Cleo kills herself to prevent being humiliated are just as much taken in by her as Caesar is. G. B. Harrison, my favourite Shakespearean scholar, flatly calls the play "the most magnificent of all Shakespeare's plays", but he concludes it is not a "deep tragedy" because the story of “a man who throws his wealth into the lap of a harlot and then kills himself” is not essentially tragic. Need I add, Mr Harrison missed the point, too. I found a very charming essay by one C. T. Winchester, written more than a century ago and first published posthumously in "An Old Castle and Other Essays" (1922); it's available on Internet Archive should be curious to read it.<br /><br />The notes of Emrys Jones in the New Penguin Shakespeare proved to be very helpful indeed. He traces many borrowings from Plutarch and invites his readers to compare the original with Shakespeare's "poetic paraphrase" (Mr Winchester's words). Few things convince me more strongly in Shakespeare's genius; those who still blame him for borrowing his plots couldn't be blinder. Plutarch's turgid prose is transformed into gorgeous verse in the same way as Liszt transformed the pedestrian themes of Meyerbeer and Donizetti into compositions of startling originality. We must not, of course, neglect Shakespeare's most notable addition to Plutarch, the wisest, the wittiest and the most quotable character in the whole play. I don't think anybody else could have made Tony and Cleo so coherent and believable, but it certainly takes a Shakespeare to create Enobarbus.<br /><br />I have not started with the movies yet, but I do intend to see three of them. More of that later this week.Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16093061780494131162noreply@blogger.com