Word: cleopatras
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...prime virtue of this production is the Cleopatra of Carrie Nye. As she is made up, she looks surprisingly like our current screen Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor; and she has the added advantage of acting ability. Miss Nye can take her place beside her distinguished predecessors in the role--Gertrude Elliott, Lilli Palmer, and Vivien Leigh...
...Shaw's Cleopatra has feline forebears. During her sixteenth year, Caesar does not, as so many critics have maintained, turn a cat into a queen (Shakespeare shows us the Queen Cleopatra); he turns an untrained kitten into a full-grown cat. Miss Nye is careful always to preserve her felinity -- through the way she lounges on the right paw of the Sphinx, indulges in catty grimaces, voices her petulant "But me! me!! me!!! what is to become of me?," plans Ftatateeta's murder with paw-like hands, and poses with crossed arms at the final fade-out. An occasional huskiness...
...battlefield than on it... I have been careful to attribute nothing but originality to him." Caesar is, as Eric Bentley astutely observed, utterly devoid of the two types of action traditionally associated with the heroes of melodrama: revenge, and erotic passion. Instead, Shaw transfers the skill in both to Cleopatra. Thus he is already playing around with his thesis that it is woman who pursues man, not the other way around--a theme he would later treat in full, notably in Man and Superman...
Caesar coolly masterminds the whole play. Yet his statements and actions are purposefully chameleonic and inconsistent--but convincing nevertheless, when well played. Against Miss Nye's Cleopatra, the Caesar of George Voskovec is disappointing. The core of Caesar lies in the fact that whatever he says or does has no motivation other than the quite sufficient one that it is natural for this unique personage at the moment...
...main supporting roles are almost all excellently portrayed. They are easier to do, since the characters never change during the play. Only Cleopatra changes; Caesar, since he contains within him all characteristics, cannot be said to change in any essential way. Everybody else is a two-dimensional person. This would be a flaw in most plays; but not here. Shaw intentionally surrounded his two stars with people who are not original. They are fixed beings, and act only from habit or system. For Caesar (and for Shaw) such people are fools--but indisponsable all the same...