“Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me. Now no more the juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.”
Kenton Stevens
4 Stars
Venue : fortyfivedownstairs
Melbourne
Dates: Until September 13th 2026
What better way to spend a random Tuesday evening, than in one of my favourite Melbourne theatre spaces. Wherein, a simple, yet highly effective, lighted and crafted stage (Rob Sowinski and Eloise Kent), affords a fine company of players place and opportunity to ride the crescendos of this rich and mighty language.
In Shakespeare’s play, death recurs as a word or idea more than thirty times. It is, after all, a story of tribes, of conflict, war and sacrifice. But in this surging towards inevitable death, the Melbourne Shakespeare Company breathes new life.
From the shining eyes of actors savouring their craft, to the pleasingly stylised choreography (Thomas Royce-Hampton) of a company working in unison to shape and propel the piece onward. From the re-shaping of text, and deft deployment of Charmian (Tsungirai Wachenuka, who is wonderful) as our storyteller in chief, to locating the heart of the work in Cleopatra. We find a new way to see this story. Here, in all her majesty and imperfections (she whom age cannot wither, “nor custom stale her infinite variety”), and in her very humanness, we have our fulcrum.
Akina Edmonds (Cleopatra) is tremendous. Her play, speed of thought and delivery, flaring tempers, wily humour, and ultimately her embodiment of devastating loss. Upon Mark Antony’s death, Cleopatra’s constant motion, almost aimless, almost frenzied, scrambles to find and hold onto kernels of his living. Her pain is a deeply held truth.
Where’s Antony? asks Enobarbus (Laura Iris Hill). As he travels hither and thither between his lover, and his Rome. Caught in the power plays and politics of his time and nature, torn between heart and ambition. And, what is he?, asks Agrippa, as Louis Lucente’s Antony scales the heights of the fearless man of principle facing off with Octavius Ceasar (Damon Baudin), then plummeting toward the spurned and petulant child in argument with Cleopatra.
All this and more is re-imagined and steered by the assured directorial hand of Sonya Suares. Holding Cleopatra at the centre, we are invited to appreciate anew her enduring presence across cultures and histories.
Before death, Cleopatra bids the women around her ‘put on my crown’. The immortal longings of impending death rising up before her. Yet, in Suares’ production, this immortality is no ending, it is given wing to create a new beginning. That Cleopatra may soar upon the beauty of Shakespeare’s words, and shine brightly before the ‘sun and moon’ which light our ‘little O, the earth’.
We are offered up a gift. To glimpse Cleopatra once more. A little differently, maybe. A little more vividly. Still imposing. Riding upon the ancient River Cydnus atop her barge ‘like a burnished throne, burned on water’, at full purple sail ‘so perfumed that the winds were lovesick with them.’ And thus, like Antony, once more may we become enchanted by this Egypt.
Kenton Stevens, Theatre Now
