Antony and Cleopatra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 11

Antony and Cleopatra

To go to the theatre in your own drawing room, kitchen, or study, this is what the BBC World Theatre enables you to do. This is very different from going to the theatre in the usual mannet, No. evening clothes, no taxi, no crowds in the «vestibule, no craning of necks to see Who is There. You only have to stop yéur telephone bell with a

handkerchief, settle down ~- comfortably, and. wait with your Shakespeare before you-or without it. This ig a debatable Doint. I had my fears and my expectations as I always have, when I go to the

theatre. Only this time they were | directed to different objects. I personally favour with Sir Lewis Casson "the illusion of real happenings." Would the sole medium of the voice be sufficient to create this illusion? Another object of my anticipations was the greater intimacy that I expected drom the radio. One of the conventions of the theatre one has to put up with is the volume of the voice which is frequently quite out of proportion to the actual situation. What came of my expectations? I have nothing but praise for the producer of Antony and Cleopatra, Val Gielgud. The use he mede of the narrator was of real help and in no way obtrusive. The play was slightly abridged and the order of scenes changed to good effect. But what about the matter of intimacy and of illusion of reality? Here frankly I was terribly disappointed. There was far too much shouting. Clifford Evans, as Antony, did not take advantage of the new medium of. the microphone. He was in fact on the stage, and ‘there he reached moments of real greatness as (continued on next page)

_ Radio Review (continued from previous page)

: ; , ; 2 when he conveyed to us Antony’s despair over his defeat at Actium. Here for once the illusion of life penetrated right through the medium of the radio-only _ to be dashed to the ground by the an- | nouncement that for the next thirty-six minutes I could listen to the Overseas and New Zealand . News, the United Nations Album, and the result of the New Zealand bowling championships. This to my mind betrayed a complete lack of imagination. At any rate, the interval should not have lasted for longer than fifteen minutes. Fay Comp- | ton singularly failed to conjure up the image of "the old \serpent of the Nile" _or "the ancient Parisienne," as Heinrich _ Heine called Cleopatra. The woman of irresistible charm "‘whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh, to weep; whose | every passion fully strives to make itself fair and admir’d." In whatever scene Cleopatra appears Shakespeare lights: up her character from a different anglewhat chances of variation in shade and tone and volume of .her voice were missed here! The illusion of reality and the note of intimacy were achieved,

however, in Bernard Miles’s part: as Enobarbus, in Eros, and in the roles of Cleopatra's maids, These parts pulsed with Jife in an unaffected *and convincing manner, These actors gave us a taste of what the play might have been. Still I do not wish to let my disappointment run into ingratitude. I am immensely ininterested in this experiment of the BBC World Theatre and am looking forward to the other performances with en-

thusiasm,

R.

R.