Hindsight

Since I moved to NY, I haven’t been able to attend all the Actor’s Shakespeare Project shows like I used to (for past shows click here and scroll past the honeymoon stuff). However, I did manage to get to their current production of Antony and Cleopatra. It was in an actual theater, unlike many of their shows. I think ASP perhaps failed to overcome some of the problems of pacing and structure in this play, and it probably didn’t help in this case that they were using a small number of actors to play a large number of incidental characters on both sides of a war. It was a bit hard to follow at times. However, where this play really shines is in the depiction of the two title characters — and in particular the complex character of Cleopatra, which was played VERY effectively by Paula Plum. Also noteworthy was their “reenactment” of the naval battle of Actium.

The show is up for just a few more days, so hurry if you want to catch it.

Unfortunately for me this wasn’t a dress rehearsal, it was a regular performance, and they kept the lights very low, so basically (except for the first drawing which I did before the lights went down) these are all blind contour drawings. The thing about blind contours is that they can be pretty interesting, but are seldom flattering. So with apologies to the actors, here’s what I got.