I was at The Globe yesterday, to see a production of Anthony & Cleopatra. As always with plays there, the audience had a fair number of tourists in it. Yesterday for example we had a gaggle of young Italian lovies in the row behind us. How they were proposing to follow the action is anyone's guess. It's not like watching a Laurel and Hardy short, where you can still glean a lot of entertainment value without understanding the niceties of the badinage. Even for a native speaker, it takes a bit of concentration.
The play is not one of Shakie's classics. There are some nice set pieces, but Cleo's character is about as consistent and stable as a five-year-old who's two litres of Iru Bru to the good. In one scene she's as contrite and rational as can be, and in the the next she's apparently gone crackers. This makes empathy difficult. The best line of the whole shebang is: "Let's to supper, come, And drown consideration." I like to drown consideration with my meals; it aids digestion.
All that notwithstanding, the production was excellent. The ensemble cast was superb, particularly Phil Daniels as Enobarbus. He has such range, PD, and he shows tremendous restraint. Well done, Jimmy.
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