Gimmicks trump coherence in a new production of “Antony and Cleopatra” that would probably have Shakespeare suing for copyright infringement.
Jonathan Cake and Joaquina Kalukango play the ill-fated lovers in this new British-American version, “edited and directed” by Tarell Alvin McCraney. The playwright, apparently eager to stress the play’s racial themes, transforms the Egyptians into pre-revolutionary Haitians and the Romans into French colonialists, albeit ones with British accents.
McCraney’s also dramatically reconfigured the text, cutting characters and rearranging scenes and speeches with abandon. To compensate for the streamlining, he has Antony’s cohort Enobarbus (Chukwudi Iwuji) filling us in between scenes.
Even so, the play still runs nearly three hours, what with several calypso-flavored musical and dance interludes. Cake’s hunky Antony is so busy dancing, it’s a wonder he finds time for political intrigue, let alone romance.
But while he often performs shirtless, there’s little erotic chemistry between him and Kalukango, whose Cleopatra is so tiny that Cake’s Antony frequently stoops to conquer her. She conveys little of the queen’s regal qualities, and her recital of the verse is frequently incomprehensible.
From its hackneyed voodoo elements to its clichéd bursts of percussion at key dramatic moments, this “Antony and Cleopatra” strains mightily for effect. But it’s as shallow as the pool of water on its stage.