 |
ARCHIVAL WEBSITE |
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
| Box Office | Calendar | Playfest | Education | Organization | Archives | Directions | Contact Us | |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Antony & Cleopatra | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
* = Post show discussion CLICK HERE TO ORDER ONLINE TICKETS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Orlando Sentinel
Excerpts from review Elizabeth Maupin
Posted April 10, 2004
Pictured: Sarah Mathews and Eric Hissom
The sun was just setting behind Lake Eola Thursday night when the blind Egyptian soothsayer made his first entrance and a big black bird swooped from under the stage canopy and out into the night. Surely director Jim Helsinger hasn't put starlings on the payroll for the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's gripping new production of Antony and Cleopatra at Lake Eola Park. But the omens point to a promising collaboration between the cast and crew of this fevered drama and the forces of nature at the lake. Of course, maybe you should credit Shakespeare for having the power to unleash ominous creatures of the sky -- and to persuade you to tune out the trains, motorcycles, ambulances, airplanes and helicopters that seem drawn to Lake Eola whenever there are actors on the stage.
Or maybe you should credit Helsinger and the Shakespeare Festival, whose Antony and Cleopatra is everything you want it to be. Antony and Cleopatra may not be the best-known or most- often performed of Shakespeare's tragedies, and today's theatergoers may be put off by its view of a complicated geopolitical struggle -- the massive clashes between Rome and Egypt, the shifting allegiances between Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar, with Pompey and Lepidus throwing their weight around when they can.
But all of that history serves as a backdrop for a much simpler story -- the extravagant, and extravagantly doomed, love affair between a middle-aged Roman general and a glamorous Egyptian queen. And everything in this fine production comes down to this -- the great-hearted, punch-drunk Antony of actor Dan McCleary, and the magnificent, mercurial Cleopatra of actress Chantal Jean-Pierre.
There is lots more to it, of course, from Bob Phillips' ingenious settings, which change from the austere grandeur of Rome to the riotous color of Egypt in the blink of an eye, to Eric T. Haugen and David Lander's glorious lighting, which transforms the sky from a somber bluish-gray to pale yellow-orange as the tragedy mounts to its close.
Rebecca Baygeants Turk's useful costumes distinguish easily among the Egyptians, the Romans and their foes, and they allow several of the key cast members to play dual roles without letting on. And composer Daniel Levy and sound designer Jon Goshorn turn the music into a sorrowful wail. But it's the vivid acting from the cast in Helsinger's pared-down production that strikes both gut and heart. You see it in Don Seay's tired, foolish Lepidus, the odd man out in Octavius' Rome; you see it in Johnny Lee Davenport's formidable soothsayer, his eyes glazed and his bald head embellished with paint.
You see it in Sarah Mathews' bright, sassy Charmian, Cleopatra's handmaiden; in David Hardie's Pompey, the wild-man renegade; and in smaller roles as well: the generals Agrippa (Mark Rector) and Maecenas (Stephan Jones), the soldiers Eros (Chris Taylor) and Thidias (Michael Marinaccio), the handmaiden Iras (Andrea Coleman) and the eunuch Mardian (Desmond D. Porbeni).
As Octavius, Timothy Williams makes a tightly wound, petulant boy ruler whose nasty streak takes over as his power grows. As the general Enobarbus, Antony's longtime right hand, Eric Hissom shows both the looseness of an old soldier and the heartbreak of a disillusioned friend; when he chooses his own path toward the end, his grief is shocking.
Jean-Pierre's Cleopatra makes a grand entrance, held aloft by servants on a litter: This queen is an actress through and through, shifting from tantrum to seduction when it serves her best. Still, she's as all-encompassing as her desert empire -- a girl at heart, with emotions that change on a dime, and also a woman so strong and serene that she embraces death with a smile.
It's a charismatic performance, and so, perhaps more so, is McCleary's grizzled Antony, an impressionable man who tries to be all things to all people until shame and folly bring him down. McCleary's once-mighty soldier draws strength from Cleopatra, but he's lost once he lets his heart rule over his head. Everything has been taken from him -- his reason, his good name -- and when Enobarbus leaves him he shrinks, almost collapses, as if the vacuum has sucked him dry.
There's enough blood and gore in Antony and Cleopatra to make 12-year-old boys mighty happy, and the history lesson is worth at least a couple of weeks of seventh grade. But it's the people and their stories that stay with you -- the loyal soldier who kills himself rather than his general, the anguished betrayer, the servants who gladly join their mistress in death. Antony and Cleopatra is people and their passions. At Lake Eola, it comes to you as buoyantly -- and as startlingly -- as on a blackbird's wings.
TalkinBroadway.com
Excerpts from Review by Matthew MacDermid
There's not much to dislike about Shakespeare when it is performed well. The stories are clever and exquisitely written, and the characters are pretty juicy. When it comes to Antony and Cleopatra, an unexpected romance during times of war which ends in tragedy, Orlando Shakespeare Festival proves just how accessible Shakespeare can be in a visually stunning and verbally engrossing production. Under the direction of OSF artistic director, Jim Helsinger, this Antony and Cleopatra is a galvanizing theatrical event that shouldn't be missed by anyone.
Not one member of the twenty-two person cast is weak. Beginning with the stunning title characters by Dan McLeary and Chantal Jean-Pierre and moving all the way down the list of doubling ensemble performers, each actor is perfectly aware of what they are saying and doing, pulling the audience further into the tale with each engrossing scene.
McLeary and Jean-Pierre are magnificent. Both speak beautifully and have tremendous physical presence. Jean-Pierre's mood swings happen within seconds for both a humorous and chilling effect. Eric Hissom is a delightful Enobarbus, continuing to prove himself as an Orlando theatrical necessity. As Cleopatra's handmaidens Charmian and Iras, Sarah Mathews and Andrea Coleman are both appealing to the eye as well as charmingly performed. Johnny Lee Davenport is a creepy and intense Soothsayer, and Mark Rector is a wonderfully sympathetic Agrippa.
Two performances in this production prove that subtlety in Shakespeare can be more successful than any other method. Both Timothy Williams (in a truly stirring, phenomenal turn as Octavius Caesar) and Kimberly Gray (exquisite as Octavia, his sister and wife to Antony) give moments to cherish in this already wonderful production. Williams (pictured at left) is in glorious form, and provides the strongest performance - perhaps proving that villains are more fun to play.
Bob Phillips has designed a gorgeous unit set that perfectly becomes all locations suggested within Shakespeare's text. Eric Haugen and David Lander's lighting is beautiful, several moments giving a chilling effect, while Rebecca Baygents Turk's costumes add to the visual feast. Daniel Levy's original score created specifically for this production is perfection, adding a great deal with a simple banging of a drum (all of which falls under the jurisdiction of sound designer Jom Goshorn who blends the music and dialogue wonderfully).
But all of this magic is worked by director Helsinger, who has taken one of Shakespeare's lesser performed plays and puts it "in the park" (one of Orlando Shakespeare Festival's more popular outings each season). While it may have been safer to have chosen a more lighter faire from the canon (such as next season's park production, A Midsummer Night's Dream), Helsinger has dared to do, and succeeded most admirably. Antony and Cleopatra plays at the Lake Eola Amphitheatre through April 25th. Tickets information is available on the Orlando Shakespeare Festival website, www.shakespearefest.org.
Photo: Tim Williams as Octavius Caesar
BY PAM HARBAUGH
FLORIDA TODAY
ORLANDO -- It's easy to become seduced by "Antony and Cleopatra" as produced by the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival.
|
Directed by Jim Helsinger, the production moves with alacrity and teems with pageantry, visual richness and sensuous music.
Add the balmy outdoor setting alongside Lake Eola, and you have all the mixings for a night in the theater perfumed even more by desert colors painted by lighting designers Eric Haugen and David Lander, sensual dance and music composed by Daniel Levy and Shakespeare's story of human desire.
Lust sets the stage for the climactic downfall in Shakespeare's tragedy.
It results from Antony's flagrant disregard for the Roman order of law and family caused by the sensual appeal of the exotic as personified by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.
Here, Antony is one part of the triumvirate ruling the western world.
The other are Lepidus (former University of Central Florida theater department chair Don Seay) and Octavius Caesar, who gets angry at Antony and wages war against him.
As spoken in Enobarbus' speech (exquisitely delivered by Eric Hissom), this is the scene in which Antony first saw Cleopatra: "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water . . . Purple the sails, and so perfumed that/The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,/Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made/The water which they beat to follow faster/As amorous of their strokes."
Despite his attempts to distance himself from Cleopatra and all she represents, Antony remains smitten. Dan McCleary portrays the complex character with soulful intensity, revealing the dilemma of a man living a life he was not meant to live.
No wonder, though. Cleopatra, as playfully portrayed by Chantal Jean-Pierre, exudes with petulant sexuality.
She commands her servants and flirts with them. In the process, she treats Antony as much as a boy toy servant as the rest.
As Caesar, Timothy Williams displays the youthful emperor matching wits with older generals. As he is wont to do, Williams nearly preens on stage, every swagger matched with an emphatic gesture.
Designed by Bob Phillips, the scenery here is vivid and cleverly moves the story between two extremes -- the civilization of the eastern desert and the civilization of the west.
"Antony and Cleopatra" is a revisiting of the story of the Garden of Eden. But, given the context of our world, this story of western super powers fighting in a middle eastern desert becomes a cautionary tale. We see nothing but tragedy ensue when two different worlds and cultures -- the east and west -- collide.
Pictured: Chantal Jean-Pierre
The Orlando Weekly
Excerpted from review by Al Krulick
"Antony & Cleopatra is a sprawling, gaudy, overblown triumph of a play. Its complex geopolitical/military history spans a decade, and its armies range over some of the ancient world's greatest cities and battlefields: Alexandria, Athens, Rome, Actium. Perhaps because the play attempts to portray actual personages whose love affair (also sprawling, gaudy and overblown) literally changed the course of history, Shakespeare had to write 42 scenes to tell its story -- more than for any of his other works.
The play is based on Sir Thomas North's popular 1579 English translation of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" -- classical biographies of ancient Romans and Greeks that incorporated innovative and subtle analyses of their respective lives. The widely read tome whetted the Elizabethan audience's appetite for historical representations starring vibrant characters with whom they were familiar -- especially if those stories took place in exotic, blood-soaked locales. In the tale of Marcus Antonius (famed soldier and triumvir of the Roman Empire) and Cleopatra VII (the strong-willed, beautiful queen of Egypt's Ptolemaic Dynasty), Shakespeare found rich historical and theatrical loam in which to nurture his portrait of two of history's most compelling, powerful, triumphant and ultimately tragic rulers.
The Orlando Shakespeare Festival's current production manages to embrace the excess of their love story while successfully curtailing its length, sharpening its scope and reigning in as much confusion as is possible when working with a script laden with historical references largely indecipherable by a modern audience. For this, director Jim Helsinger deserves much credit.
But what makes this sumptuous, visually stunning presentation work so well are the attention paid to the play's emotional arcs and the exploration of the characters' inner lives -- so vividly outlined by both Plutarch and Shakespeare, and ably amplified by Helsinger and company. It's a program of rich and detailed portrayals, led by Dan McCleary's outstanding impersonation of Marc Antony, the doomed defender of Rome whose thirst for earthly and carnal pleasures was at war with his duty as a soldier and his destiny as ruler of the world. McCleary has painted a sympathetic and vivid picture of this larger-than-life hero, whose exploits in battle were matched only by his huge appetite for life and the near universal adoration he inspired in his friends, cohorts and lovers. Antony was a man of gross contradictions: at times kind, honorable, charitable and self-effacing, at others, crude, violent, two-faced and obstinate. McCleary understands these contradictions and the ways in which they battle one another for supremacy of his soul. His downfall is accompanied by an openhearted self-analysis that it both moving and classically tragic.
Chantal Jean-Pierre plays Cleopatra, the brilliant and seductive queen who rivaled her Roman suitors in her dreams of a greater world empire. A young, ambitious and politically astute charmer, she managed to ensnare two of Rome's greatest leaders, Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, into her complex web. Pierre is impressive when her combative side is on the ascendant, and she presents Cleopatra's warrior-queen persona with authority. She also knows when Cleopatra needs to act out a behavior in order to achieve a specific purpose...
Pictured: Chantal Jean-Pierre, Dan McCleary, Tim Williams
|
Last Updated: 05/06/2007 Copyright Orlando Shakespeare Theater |
