Just as the disgruntled Canadian traditionalist critics were attacking Stratford's new artistic director, Des McAnuff, as a musical-comedy director unqualified in classical drama, he opened a splendid Caesar and Cleopatra for this season's final new production. It's not so often produced because Caesar and Cleopatra is long, elaborate, and expensive; and Shaw plays are fairly rare in this "Shakespeare Festival" repertory. But, headed by a towering performance by Canada's top-ranked classical actor, 78 year-old Christopher Plummer, and entirely deftly directed by McAnuff, it wrapped up an ambitious season with prestige to spare.
McAnuff's Caesar and Cleopatra is hardly flawless, but it plays with clarity and enough energy to seem shorter and less talky than it is (there are some judicious cuts); and it is the kind of old-fashioned, opulent classical drama that Stratford has been the leading theater for in this hemisphere. Robert Brill's sets are more suggestive than explicit but sufficiently elegant when they need to be; and Paul Tazewell's costumes are luxurious-looking enough to suggest Cleopatra's fabled extravagance, especially as gorgeously lighted by Robert Thomson.
Nikki M. James is a lovely Cleopatra but neither a queenly nor a dazzling one. She delivers the lines clearly but fills the role barely adequately.
I still think the underrated 1946 film performance by peerlessly beautiful Vivien Leigh develops Cleopatra from pixyish girl to formidable woman with incomparable skill. But Plummer not only matches Claude Rains' wry wit in that film but also provides a richly nuanced portrait of a commanding warrior, prescient and cynical philosopher, aged sensualist and sadly declining hero. It is an immense performance.
The large, strong supporting cast includes several standout achievements. Peter Donaldson makes Caesar's gruff, fiercely loyal, chief officer Rufio a magnetic character worth a play of his own. Steven Sutcliffe is an amusing Britannus, Caesar's Briton slave whom Shaw invented to get in his usual mockery of pompous Englishmen. But Sutcliffe really rises to Britannus' usually perfunctory heroic fighting moments and is truly touching in his faithful adoration of Caesar.
Diane D'Aquila makes the forceful Ftateeta, a more believable person than the cartoon-character we usually see as Cleopatra's nurse.
With consummate skill, director McAnuff realizes the sweep and poetry and grandeur of Shaw's play -- as epic as, but more popularly appealing than, his greater Saint Joan. It's a triumphant ending for McAnuff's controversial but never dull first season.
