SOURCE: Carnegy, Patrick. “Wanton Self-Destruction.” The Spectator 283, no. 8917 (3 July 1999): 41-2.

In the following review, Carnegy offers a mostly favorable assessment of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Antony and Cleopatra at Stratford-upon-Avon for the Summer-Winter 1999-2000 season, directed by Steven Pimlott. Although Carnegy criticizes Alan Bates, as Antony, for stumbling over many of his lines, he gives high praise to Frances de la Tour's performance as Cleopatra.

‘Men's judgements,’ as Enobarbus, Antony's sometime friend and shrewdest observer, remarks, ‘are a parcel of their fortunes.’ For Enobarbus, and for Steven Pimlott's new production, Antony's tragedy is his loss of judgement. His ill-fortune is shown as lying more in his stars than in Cleopatra's arms. We see an Antony whose behaviour is driven by ennui, even by what Sartre called nausea. Behold the man of power, the ‘triple pillar of the world’, now grown bored with omnipotence.

Cleopatra is one...