Antony and Cleopatra

RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon

During a notable theatrical career, the long-time Watlington resident Sinead Cusack has shone in many of Shakespeare's greatest parts for women, most of them with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford.

Sinead Cusack as CleopatraBeatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Lady Anne in Richard III -- all have been brilliantly portrayed by an actor whose versatility is matched only by her energy and charisma.

Her last RSC role was Lady Macbeth in 1986. Now she is back as the legendary Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

With no discourtesy intended, it has to be said that this is a part for a player in her full maturity. By the time the drama is set, it is 16 years since her love affair with Julius Caesar and "the face that launched a thousand ships" -- as that reliable commentator Enobarbus (Clive Wood) famously observes -- is not far short of 40.

Her passion now is Mark Antony, with whom we find her, as the play begins, lazing lasciviously in a Egyptian lovenest, populated by other entwined couples of diverse sexual orientation, and heavy with the aroma of smoke from a hookah.

(Cannabis? Possibly, for after Sam West's joint-rolling Hamlet, illegal substances would seem to be all the rage at Stratford.)

Antony is played by Stuart Wilson, whose last RSC role was even longer ago than Ms Cusack's -- Hotspur, back in 1975. Muscled, grizzled, slightly frazzled, he is for too long also rather sozzled. Turning him into a drunk is not, I think, the brightest touch from director Michael Attenborough in his last RSC production before he heads off to run the Almeida.

Despite a slightly annoying tendency to shout and rant, Mr Wilson gives an impressive account of the "old ruffian", a magnificent ruin whose lot it is always to be outmanoeuvred by his younger political rival Octavius Caesar (Stephen Campbell-Moore).

Of course, he can never prove a match for this coldly efficient imperial bureaucrat, no more than he can cope with the machinations and role-playing of his mistress. As always in this drama, playing Cleopatra is not the only challenge facing Ms Cusack. She must also play Cleopatra playing Cleopatra. She manages superbly.

In the end, Cleopatra's fantasies spell disaster when her faked suicide prompts Antony to take his life, leading inexorably to her terminal engagement with the venomous asp.

The play runs until July 13.

CHRIS GRAY