Braham Murray is a founding artistic director of the Royal Exchange Theatre Company in Manchester. The Exchange is an in-the-round auditorium that is the leading producing house for classic theater in the north of England. He has directed numerous classic plays, both tragic and comic, as well as musicals, modern works, and new writing, in London, New York, and Toronto as well as Manchester. He gives an account of his theatrical career in an autobiography, The Worst It Can Be Is a Disaster (2007). Here he talks about his 2005 production of Antony and Cleopatra, with Josette Bushell-Mingo as Cleopatra and Tom Mannion as Antony.
Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming associate director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as associate and subsequently chief associate director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner, Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. His acclaimed Antony and Cleopatra in the small-scale neo-Elizabethan Swan Theatre, with Patrick Stewart as Antony and Harriet Walter as Cleopatra, was part of the RSC's 2006-07 Complete Works Festival.
The play takes in most of the Mediterranean world, and has more scene changes than any other (although not always broken down in the Folio). How did your staging confront these issues? In design terms, it must have been crucial to create contrasting worlds for Rome and Egypt?
Noble: It was a rather unusual design process. Originally I was going to design it myself. I had a set in my head that was very clearly worked out. Then I decided that wasn't wise, so the night before the first day of rehearsal I brought in Nadine Baylis to design it for me.
If you look at the text there are many different locations. It bats about all over that cradle of civilization between Sicily and the Holy Land. To say we were going to create a scenic location for each spot seemed to me, from a practical point of view, to be a nonstarter. It struck me that when you are in Rome you spend your entire time thinking about Alexandria, and when you are in Alexandria you spend your entire time thinking about Rome! They talk about the other place all the time. I thought it was very important that each scene was produced from the point of view of the characters inside that scene, and that I shouldn't overlay it with a heavy editorial hand and try to create an austere, rather fascistic sort of Rome and a rather lush, liquidy kind of Egypt. It struck me that the text should do that. My idea was that there would be a rather soft space, like a huge judo mat, that went right up to the sky, that the actors could actually climb up and hang off, but we didn't do that in the end. It ended up as a rather old-fashioned design, with an upper level and a lower level. It wasn't quite what I was hoping for. But the design didn't editorialize at all; it didn't impose a particular vision, because I thought that the play needed to talk directly to the audience. I wanted the set to be like a rolling camera that would take you with the protagonists wherever they went. Many people see it as quite a filmic script; the average length of scenes is quite short at many points of the play and Shakespeare edits it like what we would now understand film editing to be. In other words, when you want to increase the excitement and the tension and the pace you have a series of short scenes. It's the equivalent of how, just before the climax of a film, the length of a cut in the editing room gets shorter and shorter and shorter. I guess the impression for the audience is that it speeds up, and the heart rate goes up. We would now regard that as a filmic technique.
Murray: The great thing about the Royal Exchange being a theater in the round is that you can be very fluid, so you can give a kind of cinematic production. You can change scenes without doing very much at all--you can do it through light. Essentially, one side of the stage in the round was Rome and the other side was Egypt, and by changing the lighting, and of course the characters coming on and off, there was a fluidity which is much more difficult to attempt on the proscenium arch.
Doran: The one thing we were absolutely determined not to do was roll on the pyramids when it was Egypt and Trajan's column or a great triumphal arch when it was Rome. You know when it's Egypt because there is Cleopatra and her court, and you know it's Rome when Octavius Caesar is on. I'm sure that the play would get terribly clogged down if you spent too much time separating them and adding to what is already quite a long play.
It seemed to me that the advantage we had in the Swan Theatre was the vivid neutrality of that space, which meant that we could create the contrast using very simple signifiers. The first decision we made was that in the Egyptian court everybody lounged about and in the Roman senate they all stood vertically. So we were able to distinguish the two worlds with horizontals and verticals. We enhanced that by having very warm, sensual lighting and costuming for Egypt, and rather chilly, cool blues and grays for Rome. We allowed ourselves chairs in the senate scene in Rome, but no other furniture for the rest of the play.
When you don't have that vivid neutrality that the Swan allows, it can create problems with this play; you have to find a way of doing the monument scene, for example. Luckily the Swan has an upper level which we were able to use for the monument. What was wonderful about that was that we were able to achieve what I think is an iconic moment in Antony and Cleopatra. In this play of love in later life the monument scene becomes a sort of reversal of the balcony scene in the play of young love, Romeo and Juliet. We were able to echo that and have Patrick Stewart as Antony hauled up the eighteen feet or so to that top balcony. So you saw this rather poignant moment of this great pillar of the world suspended like some helpless child between heaven and earth, and being lifted up by his women to the top gallery. That made it very potent and I think that image was extremely important. Occasionally productions have to struggle very hard to work out what the monument is and where it goes on the stage and they end up just using a metaphor and pull him up on a carpet or something. I think that it's a shame when you can't achieve those iconic moments, and the Swan allowed us to do that very beautifully in Antony and Cleopatra.
Is Cleopatra an unusual character in Shakespeare's writing? Or are there others like her? How do you and your actress begin to convey her "infinite variety"?
Noble: I don't think there are others like her, to be absolutely honest, because she is an extraordinary mixture of queen and slut. If you start from the former, the other queens, there really are no others like her at all. Possibly Margaret of Anjou [in the Henry VI plays], just in terms of the breadth. But Margaret of Anjou is very politically astute, whereas Cleopatra certainly isn't in many areas of the play. She is a one-off. It is a play that you can't do without her. I'd worked with Helen Mirren before. We were going to do The Taming of the Shrew as well, but the dreaded RSC schedules kept the world from seeing Helen Mirren play Kate!
Regarding her "infinite variety," I think you have to be quite literal about it. If you literally follow where the character goes, scene by scene, moment by moment, it will lead you there inevitably, as long as the actress has the skill to take you there. But you have to fulfill each aspect, and when you do that, then you find yourself with an infinite variety. So when you do make her deeply vulnerable, when you do make her exasperatingly selfish, when you do make her a woman who is prone to over-dramatization, self-dramatization, when you do make her quite sexually voracious, when you not only tick those boxes but fill those jars to overflowing, then you get there. But very often what happens is either an actress can't do them all or again you editorialize and you find yourself with an aspect of Cleopatra.
Murray: I think there are others like her. She's like the positive side of Lady Macbeth. I think Shakespeare was fascinated by that kind of woman, who exerted huge power over men and was obviously sexual and charismatic. I think Lady Macbeth and she are very much out of the same stable. Also, I suppose, Margaret in He
nry VI. It's the same things: power, charisma, and sexuality.
As for her "infinite variety," well, I had an absolutely wonderful actress--it's why I did the production. It's a play I'd always wanted to do, since I was about sixteen, but could never find the actress who I thought could really embody it. Josette Bushell-Mingo is very remarkable. She is easily "of the East" and, crucially, foreign, as it were. She has that amazing ability to be completely free with her emotions, which is crucial for that character. There's no question that she is every inch a queen and no question that men were in her thrall. She is just a thrilling actress and, as I say, that's why I actually did the play.
Doran: Having done both Lady Macbeth and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing with Harriet Walter it seemed that Cleopatra was a combination of all those elements. I remember Harriet saying, "How on earth do I play this 'infinite variety'?" I advised her that you can't; all you can do is play her moment by moment and make each of those moments particular and as vivacious as possible, so that the cumulative effect is of infinite variety. She is of course a glorious character, one of the most attractive in the pantheon of Shakespeare's characters and probably the greatest female role ever written. She is everything that everybody says about her, even including Enobarbus' hyperbole. The fun of playing her is that she can be capricious and willful one moment and profound and moving the next. She has that extraordinary versatility.
Antony Sher once said that Antony bored him but that he'd like to play Cleopatra! Why do you think there are more women (and men?!) keen to play Cleopatra than men to play Antony?
Noble: It's a better part! Cleopatra is a great, great part. Antony is a very good part. Hamlet is a great part, King Lear is a great part, Antony is a very good part. Something rather curious has happened in terms of fashion, though, because it was regarded, when, for example, Anthony Quayle played it, as one of the benchmark characters that an actor could play. So your question really is why in a modern world is it not regarded so highly? I have to put on record, however, that Michael Gambon enjoyed playing Antony much more than he enjoyed playing Lear. He loved playing Antony. So it's not a universal view.
I think there are one or two practical things relating to Antony, like the fact that he's not there at the end. You inevitably become a supporting actor simply because Cleopatra has got the last forty-odd minutes, so whatever you do with Antony, it's difficult to ultimately control the impact of your character in the play. Understandably, some actors find that less attractive. I find it a great character because Antony for me embodies the Renaissance ideal. I would define that as a Greek mind in a Roman body. On the one hand, he's a great soldier, a great athlete, with great physical prowess, and, on the other hand, he's a man of fine intellect, he's a great lover, somebody who is attracted to music and the arts and culture--that's the Renaissance ideal and that's I think what Shakespeare was trying to seek out. I would suggest that was less attractive in the 1990s than it was in, say, the 1950s.
Murray: I think that's a very interesting question. The obvious, crude answer is that he dies in the fourth act and the fifth act is sublime, and if Cleopatra is any good she's going to be the memory people take from the show. But I think it's rather more than that. I think it's a man in a breakdown, who has reached a certain moment in his life where he suddenly splits apart, and by the time he loses the last battle he's nowhere, he's all at sixes and sevens. And it is all connected to love, the love of eros. He becomes enthralled with this woman and he throws away his entire career. So it is in one sense a very anti-heroic role. It's something very hard, if an actor is going to play it properly, for an actor of the right age, which is middle age beginning to pass into older middle age, to actually face that midlife crisis. It needs a very special kind of actor to do that.
Doran: I think that's because nobody, I believe, had quite realized what a fantastic part Antony was until Patrick Stewart got hold of it. It was a part I wanted him to play and a part which he seized with both hands. Olivier had called Antony a "twerp" and said that that was the problem of playing him. Patrick Stewart saw that that was the great opportunity of playing him, in that Antony does act in almost as capricious a way as Cleopatra does. He played him as this man who can no longer quite live up to his PR, who has lived his life as the center of attention but is no longer able to endure the spotlight. Follow the imagery in the play of shadows and clouds, and the ephemeral nature of life. Antony himself has a great moment when he realizes that he can no longer live up to his own image; right at the end when he thinks he has been betrayed by Cleopatra he says to Eros:
Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs:
They are black vesper's pageants.
...
That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.
...
My good knave Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body: here I am Antony,
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
He can't live up to his own reputation any more, and that extraordinary, tragic decline was both very funny and very moving. Patrick managed to bring out all that pomposity and vainglorious self-importance and yet also an awareness that he was losing it and had just one thing to hold on to: the insane, mad relationship he was having with Cleopatra. Cleopatra as a politician was always going to be able to survive without Mark Antony, but the other way around was not the case. Antony required Cleopatra in order to be able to continue with "one other gaudy night." He was a very contemporary figure; somebody who has known great wealth and fame and been at the top of their game, but is now no longer able to sustain that. Understanding that about him enabled him to be the most original Antony. Many people said that they hadn't really ever regarded Antony as a great part, but Patrick made it one.
How did you tackle the "middle-aged" quality of their passion?
Noble: One didn't really need to, because the thing is this: when people fall in love, whatever age they are, they feel like they're seventeen and they often act like they're seventeen. That's why people "tut tut" at middle-aged people kissing in public, or doing silly things, or dancing. Nearly all children are appalled when their parents dance because that's not what parents are supposed to do! I think Helen was in her late thirties and Michael was probably early forties. I didn't want to cast a fifty-year-old actress, however great she might be, because it seemed to me that we had the best in the country at that point anyway with Helen Mirren.
Murray: Well, you very rarely have a love scene between them. When you do it is obviously very important to give it great prominence. But the really important thing is the scenes when they are not together: seeing Antony dealing with Enobarbus; seeing him beginning to admit that these things are more important; seeing the rages that he gets into; and seeing his growing impotence. Once he had committed himself to being in Egypt I changed his clothes completely, a bit like, to sound crude, an aging hippie. It was rather better than that, but it was a middle-aged man trying to hang on to his youth. It's mainly contained in the play: the way suddenly the people that know him see his behavior begin to change, and their reactions to him.
7. Antony as an aging hippie in Cleopatra's exotic court: Tom Mannion and Josette Bushell-Mingo in Braham Murray's 2005 production, with Charmian, Iras, and Mardian the eunuch in attendance.
Doran: Simply by their being middle-aged: an actor in his sixties and an actress in her fifties. Shakespeare has this prejudice against elders, as Hamlet in the closet scene with Gertrude says: at her age she shouldn't be interested in sex any more. But the fact that they were tactile with each is what allowed that to work. Of course, they are never alone onstage together, except once in Ac
t 4 when Cleopatra speaks one line. It's always a performance. They are always on show and are addicted to self-promotion. They are actually separated for most of the play. There are only four or five scenes when they are together onstage, and the only moment where they really demonstrate their sexual attraction for each other is the first scene, which is very short and is also in the context of Antony being caught in this Venus flytrap. It's partially about how their love is received by the other characters onstage: either with disdain and some degree of outrage by the Romans, or by delightful encouragement from the other Egyptians in the court. Then by the time you get to the big gaudy night scene you realize that Antony is already in a state of decline, and by that point it does indeed become pathetic.
8. "Simply by their being middle-aged": Patrick Stewart as Antony and Harriet Walter as Cleopatra in Gregory Doran's 2006 production. The warmth and maturity of their love is revealed in their shared sense of humor.