DOES THIS LAUREL WREATH GO WITH BIRKENSTOCKS? The cast of the Gingold Theatrical Group production of “Caesar and Cleopatra,”at the ground-floor theater at Theater Row. Costumes, a blend of classical styles and contemporary garments, are by Tracy Christensen.
I KNOW THAT THE TITLE characters here are Julius Caesar, emperor-for-life* of the Roman Empire, and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, but after seeing this playful and highly satisfying George Bernard Shaw revival at Theater Row, I have three other favorites.
*But beware the Ides of March.
DON’T CRY FOR ME, ALEXANDRIA Brenda Braxton as Ftatateeta, Cleopatra’s nurse, who does not suffer from low self-esteem. She opens by announcing the superiority of Egyptian culture (to the audience’s culture), including the worship of “better gods.”
Frankly, I was unfamiliar with the character Ftatateeta (played by the elegant Brenda Braxton), but she is the essence of ancient Egyptian dignity. Technically she is the young Cleopatra’s slave, her head nurse, but the balance of power between the two women shifts constantly.
Ftatateeta’s grandest moment is the speech in which she explains time, placing the gods in the past, our dreams in the future and only one thing in the present: us. “This moment has power,” she intones. “This moment has magic. This moment has the answer.”
Her words seem to cast a spell. Finally she point out that time is “doing what it does best — it carries us along in spite of ourselves.”
THE SICILIAN! Dan Domingues as Appolodorus with young Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim). Apollodorus was a popular man’s name in Ancient Greece.
Apollodorus was also a new name to me, but apparently it was a very popular baby name for boys in ancient Greece. There were philosophers, poets, artists, historians and at least one general by that name. This Apollodorus was a real historical figure too, and I love the way he announces himself with such vigorous ethnic pride: “I am Apollodorus. The Sicilian!”
Dan Domingues may seem like just a pretty body (the hairy chest and those gold chains would have totally rocked in the disco ’70s), but his admiration for Cleopatra feeds a crucial plot development. App (as his friends probably never called him) is a rug merchant and is able to help Cleopatra make a dramatic entrance when she visits Caesar. Here’s the movie version, in the Rex Harrison section of the trailer:
HE’S NOT HEAVY. HE’S MY PHARAOH. Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s younger brother and co-regent, second from right, is played by a baby-faced puppet. From left, Lim as Cleopatra, Robert Cuccioli as Julius Caesar, “Ptolemy” and Rajesh Bose as Pothinus,
Now I had heard of Ptolemy, of course. I get Ptolemy XII, XIII and XIV mixed up, but this one is Cleopatra’s younger brother. He’s also her husband, which is the way dynastic things were simplified then (a female leader had to have a family member as consort). Ptolemy and his guardian, Pothinus (Rajesh Bose), who carries him around in his arms, are sure he is going to rule Egypt alone. (They’re wrong.)
But I’d never seen Ptolemy before as a puppet — a very cute one, with innocent, Muppety black eyes; a straight-line mouth as wide as his face; and a shaggy Egyptian hairdo. When he speaks, Pothinus is speaking for him, which is probably as much about historical reality as ventriloquism.
Sadly, Ptolemy is not long for this world. (They say his sister poisoned him, but Cleopatra was never convicted. Or tried. Or accused.)
Now let’s discuss the stars of our show.
CASUAL CHIC The very young Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim) and the more mature Julius Caesar (Robert Cuccioli) meet cute when she doesn’t realize who he is and keeps calling him “old gentleman.”
AGE IS AN IMPORTANT factor in Shaw’s play. Cleopatra’s habit of addressing Julius Caesar as “old gentleman” may be rude, but it makes a certain amount of sense. When the action of Shaw’s “Caesar & Cleopatra” takes place (around 47 B.C.), the young woman would have been in her early 20s and the gentleman in his early 50s.
She seems even younger here. It’s an unexpected delight to see Cleopatra portrayed as a pouty, goofy teenage type in sweatshirt, pants and sneakers. She has a long-distance.crush on Marc Antony, a man she has yet to meet. She likes to boss around her servant, just because it makes her feel powerful. And she has a familiarly adolescent attitude: “It’s not that I am so clever,” she complains at one point, practically rolling her eyes, “but that the others are so stupid.”
OOOH, ‘ENRY ‘IGGINS. Cuccioli and Lim in their Sunday best, after Cleopatra has learned a lot about attention-getting fashions, regal posture and general attitude.
But she’s determined to reign over Egypt, all by herself, and she may need a little campaign-image help. That’s when “Caesar & Cleopatra” reminds us very specifically of “Pygmalion,” Shaw’s 1913 play (14 years after this one had its first production), about an older, cultured, more powerful man teaching a young, unpolished woman how to shine. “Pygmalion” was, of course, the source material for the musical “My Fair Lady,” in which Henry Higgins, a pompous London linguist, gives a speech and beauty-fashion makeover to Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower seller.
David Staller (in photo), the production’s director, sees significant parallels between Shaw’s thinking in the two plays. “It was the beginning of his exploration of the teacher/pupil relationship that he continued to tinker with” in “Pygmalion,” Staller wrote in a program essay. “The concept of both characters needing each other to move forward in life, with each becoming equal parts student and pupil, had resonated with him from his earliest years.”
Still, Caesar gets an awful lot of the best lines, and the devilish Cuccioli (who has charmed Broadway audiences in shows from “Jekyll & Hyde” to “Spider-Man”) delivers them with an offhand air of lifelong confidence.
IT WAS SOMETHING I DRANK Cuccioli on Broadway as Mr. Hyde in “Jekyll & Hyde” (1997).
“I wander, and you sit still,” Caesar says, defining “you” as the rest of the world. “I conquer, and you endure.”
When a lesser mortal expresses concern about getting someone to reveal secrets, Caesar sees no problem: “When a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it but to prevent him from telling it too often.”
LOVE CHILD Rex Harrison as Caesar, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and Loris Loddi, center, as the characters’ son, Caesarion, in the 1963 film “Cleopatra.”
Shaw’s “Caesar & Cleopatra” is only about the teacher-pupil aspect of the couple’s relationship. In real-life history, Cleopatra bore Caesar’s son, so we can safely infer that they became even closer.
“Caesar & Cleopatra,” Theater One, Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, telecharge.com. Running time: 2 hours. Limited run. Closes on Oct. 12.
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FOR MORE ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, CHECK OUT THE PRESS NIGHTS GLOSSARY.
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