Word: cleopatras
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...play shows a middle-aged Julius Caesar championing a young Cleopatra against her brother in a squabble over the Egyptian throne, and barely winning out by force of arms. But what most playwrights would turn into gaudy love feasts and drum & trumpet heroics is a chance for Shaw to explore the ancient world, contrast youth with age, servant with master, Egypt with Rome, Caesar with Caesarism...
Sixteen-year-old Cleopatra runs through the play like quicksilver-a kitten all cuddle and claws, still worlds away from Shakespeare's Serpent of Old Nile. Caesar, finding her a petulant child, leaves her a queen and woman, with a new authority and cruelty. But it is Caesar who really dominates the stage: a Caesar who is neither the image on a Roman coin nor the stern voice of the Roman Capitol, but a great and contradictory man molded into a peculiarly Shavian hero. Shaw's Caesar is much more the clement conqueror than the model for dictators...
...joker in Shaw breaks out sufficiently in Caesar and Cleopatra, e.g., his burlesqued esthete (well played by John Buckmaster) and frightfully proper Early Briton (well played by Arthur Treacher). But the tone of the play is prevailingly wry and ironic. The air seems very chill at times for all the Mediterranean sunlight. A bald and aging conqueror withholds his heart from a violent young girl rather than have her torture it; then, with a rueful smile, promises to send her a dashing young Marc Antony. "Murder shall breed murder . . ." he laments, "until the gods are tired of blood and create...
...properly tightened version, enhanced by Rolf Gerard's impressive, simple sets. Sir Cedric Hardwicke (plagued by laryngitis on opening night) plays his role with a slow gravity better suited to Caesar than to Shaw, but still with real authority and understanding. European-born Lilli Palmer suits both Cleopatra and Shaw. She is as kittenish as Shaw's Cleopatras always are, as physically alluring as they always should...
...revival. For nine months he badgered the producers with peppery cables, letters and postcards telling them just how to finance, cast and stage the play. He hand-picked Sir Cedric as Caesar (having coached him in the role in London in 1925), and gave Lilli Palmer his blessing as Cleopatra after Gertrude Lawrence brought her around for a visit last summer. He even passed on the production's Manhattan playhouse...