The Department of Theatre in the College of Charleston School of the Arts will present William Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” as part of the department’s 15th annual Shakespeare Project.
As adapted by director J.A. Ball, Shakespeare’s lovers’ tragedy about Roman Triumvir Mark Antony and the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra is set in an Alexandria where ‘reveling’ means singing and dancing to the greatest hits of the disco era. The production will run Thursday, August 18 through Sunday, August 21 with a second run from Thursday, September 1 to Tuesday, September 6.
Curtain times will be at 7:30 p.m., except both Sunday shows at 3 p.m. only. Shows will take place at the Emmett Robinson Theatre in the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 Saint Philip St.
Tickets may be purchased at the box office or by telephone (843) 953-6306. Admission is $15 for general admission and $10 for College of Charleston students, faculty and staff and senior citizens 60 and older. Season subscriptions are available. The “talkback” discussions with the cast and crew will take place opening night following the performance.
“While Antony is certainly a juicy portrait of one of antiquity’s most infamous power couples and their fatal misadventures,” according to director J.A. Ball, it is also “a tragedy about worlds colliding, empire and its enabling myths of the ‘Orient,’ as well as the desire to ‘go native.’” “Disco is how I’ve chosen to express what Rome found sensual and exotic about Egypt,” Ball explains, “but we could have just as easily rendered the Egyptians as the Native Americans in Dancing with Wolves or as the Navi in James Cameron’s film Avatar. For Shakespeare, that’s how ‘out there’ and alien his Egyptians were meant to be perceived.” To support this vision of Egypt, Ball noted that the design elements will strike a particularly lavish note for this show.
The production staff, in addition to director J.A. Ball, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre History, includes choreographer Meg Fannin-Buckner, costume design by Keller Perry, sound design by Jennifer Timms, lighting design by Carl Barnwell, Jr., and finally scenic design by Alexis Usry.
The cast includes Mary Rogers McMaster as Cleopatra and Evan Parry as Mark Antony. Other roles are played by Robbie Thomas (Enobarbus), Grace Metropolis (Octavia), Ryan Masson (Octavius Caesar), Brent Laing (Lepidus), and Joy Vandervort-Cobb (as the Soothsayer).
Founded in the summer of 1997 the Shakespeare Project has presented 24 productions, which include productions of nineteen of Shakespeare’s plays. It is the only theatre group in Charleston that regularly produces Shakespeare and has the long-term goal to eventually present at least one production for free and outside.
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The Post and Courier, August 14, 2011