Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo heat up the computer screen in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA via NT at Home

• By drediman
• May 12, 2020
• No Comments

Sophie Okonedo and Ralph Fiennes in the National Theatre’s production of “Antony and Cleopatra” by William Shakespeare via NT at Home. Photo by Johan Persson.

After my mild disappointment over the streaming of the National Theatre’s merely proficient production of Twelfth Night a few weeks ago, I’m pleased to report that this week’s NT at Home offering – a 2018 performance of William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra – was a satisfying, full-blooded affair, despite my misgivings about the play itself. Heating up the computer screen (ahem, I mean the stage) were two fabulously larger-than-life, scenery-chewing performances by two award-winning British actors, Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo, in the title roles.

Admittedly, Antony and Cleopatra is not among my favorite of the Bard’s works (of the Roman Tragedies, I prefer the more soundly plotted Julius Caesar and Coriolanus). The play’s haphazard series of events never fails to leave me scratching my head, and its strong-willed characters objectively inspire little sympathy. For this NT production, director Sam Godwin has set the largely maritime tragedy in contemporary times. Although the work has been skillfully updated, a part of me misses the exotic romanticism of the play’s original setting. Nevertheless, the production handles the work’s panoramic scope uncommonly well – thanks to Mr. Godwin’s brisk but muscular staging – without sacrificing the poetry of Shakespeare’s writing (characteristics shared by the director’s Timon of Athens at TFANA earlier this year).

As for the acting, I thought it was excellent. As the famously reckless Roman general and Egyptian queen, respectively, film star Ralph Fiennes and regal stage actress Sophie Okonedo (who won a Tony Award for her performance in the last Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun) provided the kind of palpable chemistry and deliciously melodramatic and self-indulgent – bordering on campy – turns that are able to distract viewers from the play’s unevenness. All in all, Mr. Fiennes and Ms. Okonedo’s full-throttle performances seduced with their heightened, impulsive theatricality. The rest of the cast was just fine, but really they simply provided fodder for the passionate, tempestuous love affair at the play’s restless heart.

RECOMMENDED

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Theater
National Theatre / NT at Home
Approximately 3 hours
Streaming through Thursday, May 14