"Let Rome in Moskva Melt": Antony and Cleopatra at Sovremennik

After the famous Moscow Arts Theatre, Sovremennik (in Russian the name means "the contemporary") is probably the most prestigious theater in Moscow. In its current repertory Sovremennik boasts several productions by Kiryll Serebrennikov, a young director who, after emerging less than a decade ago as an enfant terrible of the Moscow stage, has rapidly evolved into one of the most admired directors in the country, famous, among other things, for his uncompromising modernizations of the classics, riotously inventive staging, and wickedly post-modern sense of humor. Recent years have seen Serebrennikov's rise to the status of a brand name of sorts; theater mangers across the country vie for his Midas touch: his taking charge of a production has been proven to guarantee a combination of artistic sophistication and, despite his flair for the shocking, resounding commercial success. His contribution to Sovremennik's 2006 playbill was a greatly anticipated production of Antony and Cleopatra.

The project was Serebrennikov's first direct foray into Shakespeare. Probably in an attempt to forestall accusations of too-extravagant departures from Shakespeare, both the program and the playbill bore the unnecessarily coy subtitle "a version." This version of Antony and Cleopatra was set against the backdrop of an unspecified location in the contemporary Middle East, which occasionally also looked like the present-day Chechen Republic. This staging bristled with all things Muslim and was iconically evocative of everything a television viewer is likely to associate with the more fundamentalist elements of the Islamic world. The costumes varied from motley hijabs to black burkas for women, and from kaftans to military camouflage or black commando/terrorist outfits for men. In contrast, Rome's representatives looked decidedly western and projected corporate efficiency and sober imperturbability. Caesar, every inch a ruthless CEO, wore an austere suit and comported himself with frigid reserve.

The stage was framed by a booth on each side (at the end, the booths were turned into a pair of museum sarcophagi in which the heroes found their final rest). A female figure in Muslim attire inside one of the booths was in charge of a soundtrack of sorts: a lesson in Arabic that intermittently accompanied the action. With the placidity of a tape recording, a voice first introduced the audience to simple locutions and their translation; as the play progressed, the innocuous salam aleikums gradually gave way to more complex and disturbing ones, such as "I have lost my wife" and other disconcerting appeals for help and exclamations of despair. Translation, or rather untranslatability and miscommunication—whether between east and west or love and duty—turned out to be one of the production's extended metaphors. As for the spoken text itself, it appeared to be a reasonably modernized blend of prose and verse—a synthesized version of several standard translations. At times more colloquial, even folksy (though not unpalatable) diction disturbed the decorum.

Philo's report about the "dotage of our General" was delivered to the accompaniment of a video transmission from Cleopatra's bedroom: two interlocked bodies, busy at making a beast with two backs, for some time writhed on a giant screen, before rolling, minimally dressed, from behind the scenes onto the stage, dusting themselves off, and assuming the roles of Antony and Cleopatra. Serebrennikov cast his favorite, Chulpan Hamatova, Sovremennik's most accomplished, versatile young actress as his Cleopatra. Of small stature, still a wisp of a girl at thirty-two, Hamatova only for a moment seemed an unusual match for the production's Antony, the veteran of the silver screen Sergei Shakurov, twice her age.

Figure 1.

Antony (Sergei Shakurov) and Cleopatra (Chulpan Hamatova) in Antony and Cleopatra at The Sovremennik, Moscow. Photo by Michail Gutman.

The inventiveness of the opening was but a foretaste of Serebrennikov's imagination, which is famous for never running dry. His other inventions included a bizarre, chalky, mummy-like soothsayer, equipped with a yard-long phallus (at the end of the play he tragically re-emerged without it, a bloody spot in its place); the battle of Actium was rendered...