Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There has been some great integration of British Sign Language (BSL) into theatre productions recently, not only celebrating the skill of deaf actors but drawing out themes and expanding the aesthetic. Now Blanche McIntrye’s new Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe goes a stage further.In McIntyre’s admirably ambitious, bilingual production of the great tragedy, with associate director Charlotte Arrowsmith, everyone in the Egyptian court uses BSL, while the Romans communicate in spoken English. Encounters between the two play out in both languages. Above the stage the text of the whole play unrolls in surtitles on a great glowing disc, as if printed on the Egyptian sun — a move that embraces hearing and deaf audience members alike. Each is going to need those surtitles at different points.It is an approach that emphasises the stark differences between the two regimes. Military-minded, rational Rome is a place of starchy formality; in Egypt, Nadia Nadarajah’s Cleopatra and her waiting women express themselves with lyrical physicality. Nadarajah’s mercurial, sensual, imperious queen never stops moving; you can see why Antony might have unbuckled his armour for her.The increased emphasis on movement makes for more physical comedy than usual and for touching insights: at moments of greatest intimacy, John Hollingworth’s Antony shifts from his speech to her sign language. When characters die, their words on the screen crumble and drift away.But sadly there are also challenges that the staging does not overcome. This is a knotty, wordy play, brimming with great poetry. That makes for a great deal of intricate text, quite long to sign, and some passages, such as the countryman’s gag-riddled speech near the end, fell flat. Unless you know the play by heart, you find yourself reading the surtitles a lot, at the expense of experiencing the performances fully. As a hearing person, that means reading Cleopatra’s heartbreaking lament at the loss of Antony rather than engaging with Nadarajah’s delivery of it.There are other issues too. The battle scenes feel strangely underpowered and the gravity of what is at stake doesn’t come across. There is little sense of a mighty struggle for power or of the tension between the soaring self-mythologising of the lovers and their real, flawed characters. There are some beautiful moments, however. Scenes between Cleopatra and her waiting women Iras (Gabriella Leon) and Charmian (Zoë McWhinney, who is excellent) are filled with tender concern. Daniel Millar makes a terrific gruff and wise Enobarbus. And it is great to see the Globe continuing to build on its democratic ethos, even if the results this time are mixed.★★★☆☆To September 15, shakespearesglobe.com
