Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s mainstage 2026 outing does Antony and Cleopatra a little differently. Director Sonya Suares’s adaptation prunes this long, complex play to 100 minutes and, as the title switcheroo suggests, places greater emphasis on the Egyptian queen.

The result isn’t up there with the company’s best offerings, notably 2024’s extraordinary Hamlet, but for the most part Cleopatra & Antony is a solid production of a Shakespeare work that’s not performed often enough considering its riches.

Akina Edmonds and Louis Lucente in Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s Cleopatra & Antony. Photo © Nick Mick Pics

Suares gives Cleopatra’s most trusted servant Charmian the additional duty of narrator to briefly fill some gaps caused by the cuts, and to provide quasi-contemporary commentary on her queen. Charmian’s prologue asserts Cleopatra was much greater than the negative and dismissive labels long applied to her, and ultimately deifies the queen with the delayed “barge speech” as epilogue.

It’s always worthwhile reassessing women in fact and fiction written by men in the past, though as Cleopatra is probably Shakespeare’s most powerful, three-dimensional female character perhaps there are better candidates.

Indeed Suares fumbles Cleopatra’s suicide scene, which usually makes the queen triumphant in tragedy as she all but closes out Shakespeare’s play. Here the fatal snake is replaced by something else that’s underwhelming, the weeping of some cast in servant roles is distractingly excessive, then the new ending turns Cleopatra into a wordless icon.

Nevertheless Akina Edmonds interprets her with a commanding mix of imperious, playfully sexy, calculating and volatile, while Louis Lucente is assured in the role of Antony, conveying both inner strength and vulnerability.

Octavius, who will become Rome’s first emperor, Caesar Augustus, because of the events dramatised in this play, needs a little more cold ambition than Damon Baudin gives him.

Jennifer Vuletic in Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s Cleopatra & Antony. Photo © Nick Mick Pics

Standouts among an uneven supporting cast are Jennifer Vuletic, who exudes gravitas through understatement as Octavius’s right-hand-man Agrippa, while Tsungirai Wachenuka’s narrator Charmian is a confident, likeable conduit for the audience.

Several others are double or even triple cast and, despite adjustments in voice or costume, it’s occasionally tricky to keep up with which minor character they are playing.

Suares keeps Cleopatra & Antony moving at an engrossing pace, often jumping directly from scene to scene. The occasional choreographed scene-ending punctuation of an actor being surrounded and swept away by several others is a striking allusion to the inevitability of events. Movement and Fight Director Thomas Royce-Hampton’s more meditative, fluid choreography is less satisfying.

Melbourne Shakespeare Company works with tiny budgets, and Cleopatra & Antony is no exception. Eloise Kent’s simple set enables physical flow and dramatic emphasis with three long, low, tiered platforms, clad so they suggest Colosseum-like stone seating.

Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s Cleopatra & Antony. Photo © Nick Mick Pics

During a choreographed representation of the pivotal Battle of Actium, taught curtains stage left and right are agitated in an awkward looking representation of warships’ sails.

Costume Coordinator Samantha Hastings is more effective with her humble textile budget. The men’s loose pants and three-quarter tunics, sometimes enhanced with a hint of toga-like drapery for VIPs such as Octavius, are persuasive suggestions of ancient Roman dress. Otherness is conveyed through splashes of rich colour, pattern and texture.

Once again Melbourne Shakespeare Company has done a lot with a little, even while tackling a work that’s so demanding to stage it’s not been seen in this city for several years. This production will be particularly welcomed by those who aren’t up for the full 42 scenes and 34 named characters, or who enjoy feminist reappraisals of classic texts.

Cleopatra & Antony is at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne, until 13 September.