Antony and Cleopatra

June 26 play#6 Antony and Cleopatra- The Shakespeare Theatre

This play has its fans. I know Ralph Cohen from the American Shakespeare Center hails this play as Shakespeare’s greatest. I’ve always thought it was a bit messy. I liked it much better on stage. Act 4 is still a trick to make sense of, but now that I’ve seen it live, I admire so much about the play.

My friend Jenny Leopold pointed out the variety of character relationships, particularly in the early part of the play. She pointed out that it was a strength of the piece. I think she’s exactly right- and something that’s counter-intuitive to a play with the name of the two main characters in the title.

Michael Kahn’s work is very interesting- visually extraordinary (a bit soulless though. It’s hard to project warmth when you have two actors playing a scene sixty feet from each other). But, I was in complete admiration of his ability to create striking, exciting visuals. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a director do it as well.

The proficiency of the artists involved with the production was on full display- a master craftsman each and everyone. But what about innovation? There seems to be a “way” to produce and direct high profile Shakespeare in North America. It’s fine, it’s good, it’s highly watchable, but….

There's an attempt to use modern perspectives to make these plays connect to a living audience, but their original point of view seems half-hearted, conventional, and, well not that original. How can you innovate if your "innovation" looks and sounds like everybody else's "innovation?" It's sort of like being a dinosaur rock band back in the 1970's, right? I mean, Foreigner sounded exactly like Boston who sounded exactly like Journey. These were all popular bands, but they were all just trying to master the same "sound." Maybe that's it. Perhaps these big budget Shakespeare companies aren't trying to innovate at all- perhaps they're just glad to have the big hits on AOR stations and being able to sell product?

It would seem like you'd have to go through a lot of trouble to do that, but...

And what about the little guys? I'm the Artistic Director of one of these little guys. Many of us (there are, after all around 100 Shakespeare companies across the US) are just trying to replicate the big guys, but with smaller budgets. Is that interesting? Mmmm, maybe not so much.To take the analogy further, aren't many of the small Shakespeare companies just like those cover bands that were everywhere in the seventies? You know, maybe they would play one original song every night, but mostly they were providing low-budget, not-as-good imitations of the Dinosaur bands.

Of course the trick is, as soon as the Talking Heads or the Ramones become popular, then everyone just tries to sound like the Talking Heads or the Ramones.