Originally announced for the Globe’s canned 2020 summer season, this production of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ has been a long time coming. And not just because its original incarnation got scuppered by Covid.
While deaf performers are beginning to make their mark in Shakespeare productions – generally in supporting roles – the Globe’s take on ‘Antony & Cleopatra’ is a landmark for a major theatre because it’s a full on bilingual English/BSL production, built around a lead performance from deaf performer Nadia Nadarajah as Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
It’s a spirited and breezy take on Shakespeare’s oft-dense tragedy that I’d say doesn’t quite work. Director Blanche McIntyre’s conceit vis a vis being bilingual is that the Romans speak English and the Egyptians BSL. Which makes a certain aesthetic sense: aside from the neatness of dividing the factions by language, the passionate, full-bodied nature of signing (or the signing done here) suits the sensual Egyptians better than the calculating Romans.
However, while there are some crossover scenes, the production’s switching between languages has a tendency to disorientingly change the energy of the show, and non-deaf audience members’ means of watching (given they’ll likely shift to watching the surtitles during these bits).
So you have Antony, Caesar and Pompey getting pissed together in English and and then Cleopatra passionately dominating her court in BSL. But I’m not sure what it really means other than a constant and odd tone shifting for the production. I’d have been able to settle into the whole thing better if it had been entirely signed or had the odd English speaking character rather than seesawing about. There’s also a lack of chemistry between Nadarajah’s grandiose Cleopatra and John Hollingworth’s sheepish Antony and I wonder if having both roles BSL might have changed that.
Still, get over this and it’s fun, a typically rambunctious Globe treatment of a classic that’s often handled with kid gloves. Nadarajah is excellent: she plays Cleopatra with her whole body, and her heady physicality and total sense of living in the moment sets the whole stage alight. Of the Romans, Gabin Kongolo is particularly good as an attitude-heavy Pompey, and Daniel Millar is a very likeable Enobarbus. McIntye’s production does do that thing where the leads’ lengthy deaths drag into something approaching comedy territory (this is absolutely Shakespeare’s fault, or at least in part) but the final image of Nadarajah’s Cleopatra sitting at her throne in poised, deathly repose is a potent one and a fitting end to a performance that is perhaps a bigger deal than the production around it.