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.