"Preserve the jam factory." So proclaimed a group of protestors outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre arguing against the demolition of Elizabeth Scott's 1932 building. Their protest took the form of playing some innocuous trad jazz; and, had they ventured inside, they'd have found a good, solid, trad production by Michael Attenborough chiefly graced by Sinead Cusack's fine Cleopatra.
Attenborough's main innovation is to cut the character of the piratical Pompey who stages a rebellion against the ruling Roman triumvirate. I greatly regret the cut for several reasons. It banishes the echo of Julius Caesar, where Pompey's father was the state's enemy.
It also means we lose the cynical display of power relations aboard Pompey's galley where Menas offers to cut the throats of the three world-sharers. "Ah this thou shouldst have done And not have spoke on't," Pompey tells his friend, thus proving that in politics public relations is more important than moral conscience.
Shorn of that episode, the play becomes a more familiar study of a doomed rhapsodic love and of a contrast between the Egyptian and Roman ethos. Here Egypt becomes a place of downy cushions, happy hookahs and sybaritic sensuality: "Here is my space," announces Stuart Wilson's Antony, unequivocally placing his hand on Cleopatra's nether regions after just enjoying a back-massage. Rome, meanwhile, is its usual monochrome metallic self where soft furnishings are seen as subversive luxury.
But the success of the play inevitably depends on the two central performers and here the fortunes are mixed. Antony is much the harder of the two main parts and Wilson brings to it heft, virility and, with his long braided locks, the aspect of an ageing rock star. But Wilson has spent more of his career on screen than on the classical stage and, although he suggests a sensual old ruffian, his voice has a clipped, staccato dryness that doesn't always measure up to the verse.
No qualms, however, about Cusack's Cleoptra which combines wit, glamour, emotional volatility and queenly dignity. You see this quality most clearly in the long adagio of Cleopatra's end where Cusack embraces death with a kind of exultation rapturously crying "he brings me liberty" as the asp-bearer approaches. This is an excellent Cleopatra; and it's a nice touch to have Trevor Martin's sinister, Aleister Crowley- esque soothsayer returning with the snake basket. Elsewhere there is commendable support from Clive Wood who turns Enobarbus into a wry Brechtian commentator and from Stephen Campbell-Moore as a quivering-lipped Octavius Caesar. In short, a robust start to the Stratford season and one that makes a case for preserving the theatrical jam factory.
· Until July 13. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
