Julia Bon-McDonald
Shakespeare’s original ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ chronicles the relationship of Mark Antony, the Roman politician and General, and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Indecisive Productions’ The Three Wives of Antony seeks to reimagine elements of its inspiring material to reframe the text in a more feminist context, as part of this year’s Six Degrees Festival. For the uninitiated (i.e., me) the differences in the two plays might be hard to spot, but they are there. Namely, the inclusion of Fulvia, Mark Antony’s first wife, who has an offstage death in the original text.
There’s a little danger in putting the ‘feminist’ label on your art. There is, of course, the fact that doing this can provoke a sort of criticism that can devolve into something far beyond the realms of what could be considered normal or reasonable. Additionally, it can also really force the viewer to consider the piece through a feminist lens, instead of politely arriving at that conclusion on their own – which I think might be what happened to me in this case. Now, we might get into some 2015, tumblr-style discourse over this, but I personally did spend a fair amount of the show asking myself how ‘feminist’ it was. But maybe its mere existence, and the fact that it has been modified through a feminist lens, makes it a feminist piece. Maybe it’s not my place to weigh in on what is and isn’t feminist – I don’t know. What I do know is that to me, it felt like despite best intentions, the female characters still often ended up being the butt of the joke, which kind of undermines the kaupapa of the show.
And I was surprised at the amount of jokes! In particular, by how anachronistic the humour turned out to be. Modern humour did help to vary the tone and pace of some scenes, but at points it felt like the jokes might have run a little bit wild? It contributed to the feeling that the atmosphere of the show wasn’t very cohesive. I don’t think that the humour was consistently related to the tone of the show, especially because all of the other dialogue was quite firmly grounded in Early Modern English. To address the added dialogue though - WOW. In my view it was nearly indistinguishable from the original text, and I can only begin to imagine how much time, work, and research this would have taken from Rosie Mazur and Chenae Phillips to pull off.
However, I found the overall narrative quite difficult to follow, which is not an issue that I have had with Shakespeare before. I’ve determined that my lack of understanding comes down to one particular factor, which is that the performance was missing enough distinct variations in tone. While the portrayals from each actor were good, with clear characterisation and distinguishing features, I felt that the performances didn’t really indicate that the characters had changed or developed as a result of the events of the show. For me it resulted in the sensation of not quite understanding what had just happened, or what was about to happen.
It would be great to see the Director get into the nitty-gritty of why these characters are doing and saying all of these things, and then demonstrate that understanding through very purposeful performance choices. A bit more intention behind the lines would serve to make the progression of the story really clear for the audience, and would help us to engage and empathise with the text. This would make the big jump of contextualising this piece in our modern society a little smaller – which from their programme, I can see was a goal of the performance.
It’s really clear that a lot of hard work went into this show. I think it would be nearly impossible to walk into The Three Wives Of Antony and not leave having thought at least once: ‘cool snake’. Sam Hearps’ set piece of a giant, coiled-up-snake-daybed was genuinely sick as fuck; and I know this snake well, as I had 15 uninterrupted minutes to check this guy out while we waited for the show to start. The surrounding ‘bedframe’ portion was covered in fabric scales that I just know took forever to cut out and glue down, and the effect was really cool – it was an impressive piece of construction and design. That being said, the ‘mattress’ portion of the snake-daybed looked a little unfinished, and more care could have been taken to finish it with a cover. Being able to see ‘behind the curtain’ of how it had been constructed, did damage the otherwise polished feel of the main set piece in my view.
I really enjoyed Sophie Helm’s costumes - the distinction between the flowy Roman garb, Cleopatra’s straight lines, and Fulvia’s more eclectic style, was a great way to visually represent the difference in the backgrounds, values, and personality of each character. I did feel that where the Roman costumes were leaning historically accurate, Cleopatra felt very modern. I also felt that there were more than a few elements that were at odds with each other over the course of the show. In the future I would encourage the entire creative team to put their heads together, and really agree on which direction they’d like to take their overall vibe in – even if this means making some difficult decisions.
This show, and the concept, has great bones. From what I understand, Cleopatra is one of the more fleshed-out female characters in Shakespeare’s canon, and raising Fulvia’s profile in the show to this level is an absolutely worthwhile endeavour. I can’t help but feel quite sorry for the three wives though; they start and end the play under the thumbs of men. The Three Wives of Antony does well to demonstrate how tragic their respective realities are, but if we’re adding material – selfishly, I’d love to see these three wives winning.
The Three Wives of Antony has now closed. But was on at BATS from the 11th - 14th of December 2024.