In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra the titular heroes are undone by love. Anthony can’t keep away from Cleopatra, and she is so besotted that when she hears he’s dead, she grabs an asp and kills herself with it.
Love is the theme, and never mind that Cleopatra is the Queen of Egypt, she’s still a woman and love will do her down.
Mirrored Metamorphosis takes a slightly different approach.
Returning to Shakespeare’s source material, Plutarch’s The Life of Anthony, we discover that although yes, the doomed pair were obsessed with one another, there was quite a bit more than lust going on here, and in particular, Cleopatra’s suicide wasn’t all to do with a Juliet-style broken heart.
The play opens with Cleopatra singing from the back of the theatre. She is dressed in white, as are all her handmaidens, who join the stage as she descends towards it. This is an effective opening, placing our focus firmly on the queen herself. As she arrives onstage her robe and crown are brought forward; the robe is red, eerily foreshadowing events to come.
This production cleverly combines direct quotes from Shakespeare’s play with speeches in both English and Latin – but fear not, you won’t need to dredge up your Higher; translations of the Latin are beamed onto the back curtain.
We learn that Mark Anthony (who is one of three men in charge of the Roman empire, and the one with responsibility for the Eastern Mediterranean) has gone back to Rome to sort out trouble there, and Cleopatra is not happy about it.
But then we are transported to Rome itself, where Anthony’s wife Octavia is also far from pleased, The women tell her story: her brother Octavian (one of the other two rulers) has made her marry Anthony to seal a deal, and now Anthony’s abandoned her for Cleopatra. She’s broken-hearted alright, but like Cleopatra, there’s more to her than that.
Latin is used exclusively in letters written by Octavia, Anthony and Cleopatra. All three actors sound completely fluent in a language which is now rarely heard spoken; they are to be commended for not only having learned their speeches but also having infused them with feeling. The actor playing Cleopatra is particularly good; her facial expressions and even her slight hand gestures convey deep emotions.
Back in Egypt, while some of Cleopatra’s women think she should be allowed to lead her own private life, others tell her to forget Anthony, and point out the political and social disasters that will likely follow any further relations with him. Cleopatra is torn; she’s fed up with the job her father dumped on her (she became co-regent with him when she was just 14.)
She feels she’s been denied any life of her own (though she may have handily forgotten that she’s already had an affair with the late Julius Caesar….) Meanwhile, the Romans can’t stand her; she is foreign, she is a woman, and she is a Queen; how terrifying is that? And seducing their leaders! What a nerve!
She does love Anthony, but she knows their affair will cause trouble, and that she should put Egypt first. So there are two men giving her pause for thought; her late father and Anthony. And, as one of the women says, in the long term Anthony probably only wants her for what she’s got: Egypt.
Back in Rome, Octavia makes the salient point that she and Cleopatra have a lot in common. They’re both being used by men. (In fact all three of them, Anthony included, were probably being used by Octavian to further his own ends.) And when things go wrong – as they already have for her, and shortly will for the Queen of Egypt – it’s not only love they’ll lose, it’s status. And this is a major theme of the play
‘Understand that love does not last. You will end the same way.’
While Octavia is losing all agency, Cleopatra is still a powerful woman. Anthony has returned and asked for her military help; they have together retreated to Alexandria. Her handmaidens tell her it’s not too late, she can still retrieve the situation;
‘You can do more than be an embodiment of sexuality.’
Unable to resolve her inner conflict, Cleopatra despairs. And when news of Anthony’s death arrives, her screams are truly shocking; we feel her pain.
‘The odds is gone/And there is nothing left remarkable/Beneath the visiting moon.’
But why does Cleopatra kill herself? Not because her lover is dead, but because she can’t face the idea of her own corpse being paraded through Rome. She will be mocked and degraded. She wants to take back power through death, the only thing over which she still has control
‘I am not a man’s whore; I ensnared a man….this body is mine, not an object to be degraded…I die not because death haunts me but because I choose to die.’
(And if Plutarch is to be believed, her suicide is not a spur of the moment decision; he says she researched poisons to find the one that would cause her the least pain and disfigurement. She is still running the show.)
Mirrored Metamorphosis is not a denial of love, but it is also an examination of power, who has it, who suffers under it, and how the oppressed can reclaim their space.
The play is well performed by this cast, although I did find it a little confusing in places – I’m not entirely sure what two of the women seemed to be washing at the rear of the stage, and I did occasionally find myself wondering if we were in Egypt or Rome. The show is also very short (it ran even shorter than its original time of 40 minutes), and could perhaps be fleshed out a little more.
However, this is a young and enthusiastic cast who handle a bilingual script well and work together to create an unusual and thought-provoking piece of theatre. They are also donating all proceeds from the show to Classics for All, a charity aiming to bring these subjects into schools that may otherwise be unable to offer them.
Mirrored Metamorphosis is at Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Forest Theatre) at 12.45pm every day until Saturday 19 August.
