Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare’s Globe)

Clive Wood (Mark Antony); Eve Best (Cleopatra); Jolyon Coy (Octavius Caesar); Phil Daniels (Enobarbus); Daniel Rabin (Agrippa); James Hayes (Lepidus); Ignatious Anthony (Maecenas); Rosie Hilal (Octavia); Ignatius Anthony (Canidius); Peter Bankolé (Eros); Kammy Darweish (Alexas); Rosie Hilal (Iras);

Antony and Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s great historical love story, a tragedy infused with comic elements that explores the conflicting claims of sex and power, expressed in poetry of breath taking beauty. Conveying the polarities of Rome and Egypt, Jonathan Munby’s ‘exquisitely understated’ (Independent) Globe production effortlessly captures the play’s cinematic rhythm, with Clive Wood cast as a ruffian, ‘indomitable’ Antony (Financial Times) and Eve Best ‘restlessly sensual’ (Guardian) in her lauded portrayal of the mercurial Cleopatra

Reviews

""Is this well done?" a character asks at the end of Shakespeare's tragedy. I'd say that Jonathan Munby's production is, on the whole, extremely well done. It captures the play's cinematic rhythm as one scene dissolves into the next, and also its dreamlike quality ..." (The Guardian ★★★★)

"Eve Best makes a superb return to acting at Shakespeare’s Globe, the theatre where she chose to launch her directorial career last summer. She’s an appealing, often magnetically humorous Cleopatra. And if there are moments when her Queen of Egypt seems distinctly flirtatious, sprawling on a divan or dipping into the audience for a kiss, her powers of enchantment mostly feel measured and carefully managed. As Antony, the Roman general with whom she so pleasurably and painfully tangles, Clive Wood has a gruff masculinity that’s tinged with angst." (Evening Standard)

"Jonathan Munby's production is a wonderfully clear and powerful interpretation of Shakespeare's late tragedy." (WhatsOn Stage ★★★★)