SOURCE: Potter, Lois. “Shakespeare Performed: Roman Actors and Egyptian Transvestites.” Shakespeare Quarterly 50, no. 4 (winter 1999): 508-17.

In the following excerpted review of the Southmark Globe Theatre's all-male production of Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Giles Block, Potter praises many of the performances of the major characters, finding in particular that Mark Rylance's Cleopatra uncovered new meaning in the play. Potter comments that the director's vision of the play emphasized the victory of “a gloriously human couple.”

In its 1999 season the Southwark Globe took up several challenges from its critics: to prove that it could do Shakespearean tragedy as well as comedy, to adopt more Elizabethan conventions (in this case, all-male casts for Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra), and to perform a new play. To make room for the last of these, which opened after I left, there were no plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries this year; I suspect that...