Word: cleopatras
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ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA...
...have been a boggier ever," Antony tells Cleopatra, and the same might be said of this drama. For Brook it is a daring choice, his first production with the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1970, when he made A Midsummer Night's Dream into a clever circus fantasy all his own. Antony and Cleopatra is not so easily transformed. At times the director seems less bent on interpreting the play than providing solutions to its technical problems. If there are more than 40 scenes, then he lets them flow into each other swiftly, with one group of actors finishing...
What Brook offers is a kaleidoscope of insight and detail; he misses nothing in the play. But there is little space left over for passion or a world well lost for love. Antony (Alan Howard) and Cleopatra (Glenda Jackson) seem too much like old buddies, rather than old and reck less lovers. Jackson brings overflowing energy to the part. Physically she is mesmerizing. Playing the imperious Queen, she uses broad, almost sculptured arm gestures. A moment later she is running like a girl or jumping dervish-like in tight circles. But there are no pauses or silences here, and finally...
...multi-colored chaos of the crowded street bazaars. The film captures well the contrast between the eternal mysterious Egyptian land, and the seemy, passionate turmoil of the cruisers, who float majestically down the Nile while plotting their little intrigues. Director of photography Jack Cardiff also filmed "Caesar and Cleopatra" and he really knows the turf...
...been eight years since Cleopatra put an asp to her bosom, Mark Antony had fallen upon his sword, and Rome's victorious Octavian had taken over Egypt. But the Nubian villagers of Dendur, 400 miles up the Nile from Alexandria, had nothing against the Romans. In fact, on the orders of the new Emperor, now called Augustus, visiting Egyptian artisans were building a temple dedicated to two young Nubian princes, Pedesi and Pihor. Both had drowned in the Nile, and victims so chosen by the god of the Nile were automatically apotheosized, as a Greek might be by a lightning...