Antony and Cleopatra
By (Author) Carol Chillington Rutter
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
14th July 2020
14th July 2020
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Theatre studies
Literary studies: plays and playwrights
792.92
Hardback
344
Width 138mm, Height 216mm, Spine 21mm
549g
This book writes a performance history of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most ambiguous play, from 1606 to the present. It observes the choices that actors, directors, designers, musicians and adapters have made each time they have brought the play's thoughts on power, race, masculinity, regime change, exoticism, love, dotage and delinquency into alignment with a new present. Informed by close attention to theatre records - promptbooks, stage managers' reports, reviews - it offers in-depth analyses of fifteen international productions by (among others) the Royal Shakespeare Company, Citizens Theatre Glasgow, Northern Broadsides, Berliner Ensemble and Toneelgroep Amsterdam. It ends seeing Shakespeare's black Egyptian Queen Cleopatra - whited-out in performance for centuries - restored to the contemporary stage. Written in a lively and accessible style, this book will be of interest to students, academics, actors, directors and general readers alike. -- .
Carol Chillington Rutter is Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick