Last night I went to see Antony and Cleopatra at the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the smaller Swan Theatre. Despite a few fluffed lines from Jonathan Cake as Antony, it was a good production, effectively edited and reimagined in Haiti. The Romans were Napoleonic-era French, Cleopatra and her entourage Haitian, though the actors were not straight-forwardly racially divided, and there was a mix of Europeans, Americans and Africans in the cast. There were some interesting colonial and slave overtones, and some allusions to voodoo and the undead that I’m not sure worked so well. The use of water on stage was effective, and fitting for a play that is much about control of the sea as of land. The text was heavily edited by director Tarell Alvin McCraney, but it still ran for almost three hours – there were some effective uses of music and song, and some neatly choreographed movement. It is only on in the UK for a few more days, then transfers to the US in the new year.