Antony and Cleopatra
1974: Jon Scoffield
Based on a production of the Royal Shakespeare Company designed by Trevor Nunn, this deviates from the bulk of his work by being set in the time and place it’s supposed to represent. The characters are, shockingly, dressed as Egyptians and Romans.
This is definitely a reasonable candidate to choose if you can only find one version to see. The cinematic quality is not spectacularly good, and the print even on DVD is a little coarse. But the acting is unparalleled. Richard Johnson’s performance as Antony itself is worth comparing to Heston’s: he brings far more variety and nuance to the part, and manages to convey a genuine sense of internal conflict. He is a sensualist seeking his own pleasure, but still always trying to justify it to himself and to his band of admirers and followers. He’s an intensely private man and at the same time he’s engaged in play-acting at every point. His diction is ranges from restrained to explosive and back again, but mostly restrained. As an approach to the material, it is consummately suited to the intimacy that the close-up camera work suggests.
Janet Suzman’s Cleopatra is his equal. She’s the soul of quicksilver-changeableness in both her speech and her body language. She postures incessantly, expressing a fickle and volatile Cleopatra — now pouting, and now expostulating; reproving Antony for his slack attentions, and reading him the riot act for his inadequate morals. She is an unfathomable, perhaps unknowable, woman — and thereby all the more fascinating.
Followers of popular culture will be intrigued to see Patrick Stewart (with hair) as Enobarbus. There are few other spectacularly well-known actors of the same order, with the possible exception of Corin Redgrave. Most of them, however, were stalwarts of the Royal Shakespeare Company during its golden age, and they knew how to wring the range of meanings from their lines with unparalleled precision, so that this potentially declamatory material takes on the appearance of completely natural dialogue. There’s a richness about this production that makes it fully cinematic (though not on the order of the Heston version of two years earlier), but it is all put at the service of the text and its nuanced delivery.
Agrippa: Philip Locke
Alexas: Darien Angadi
Charmian: Rosemary McHale
Cleopatra: Janet Suzman
Cleopatra’s Eunuch: Douglas Anderson
Cleopatra’s Eunuch: Michael Egan
Cleopatra’s Eunuch: Paul Gaymon
Cleopatra’s Messenger: Joseph Charles
Cleopatra’s Schoolteacher: Lennard Pearce
Cleopatra’s Servant: Tony Osoba
Dercetas: Jonathan Holt
Diomedes: Loftus Burton
Enobarbus: Patrick Stewart
Eros: Joe Marcell
Fig Seller: Geoffrey Hutchings
Iras: Mavis Taylor Blake
King: Derek Wright
King: Frederick Radley
King: Nicholas McArdle
King: Norman Caro
King: Richard Young
Lepidus: Raymond Westwell
Marc Antony: Richard Johnson
Mardian : Sidney Livingstone
Octavia: Mary Rutherford
Octavius (Augustus Caesar): Corin Redgrave
Scarus: Morgan Sheppard
Servant: Amanda Knott
Servant: Edwina Ford
Servant: Gito Santana
Servant: Joe Rock
Servant: Madelaine Bellamy
Servant: Wendy Bailey
Silius: Christopher Jenkinson
Soldier: William Huw-Thomas
Soldier: David Janes
Soldier: Geoffrey Greenhill
Soldier: Jeremy Pearce
Soldier: Mark Sheridan
Soothsayer: John Bott
Ventidius : Constantin De Goguel
Watchman: Robert Oates
Watchman: Arthur Whybrow
Watchman: Michael Radcliffe