Antony and Cleopatra
If we say one of the names, the other follows it. Our memory cannot evoke one without the other. Plutarch wrote that, from them on, love became the ability to see the world through the sensibility of someone else’s soul.
They mixed love and politics and came up with a politics of love. They are a historical love story. They are a romance based on real events often romanticized about. Shakespeare built them a verbal monument that turned into the truest of truths what never happened to them. In Mankiewicz’s film that led 20th Century Fox to bankruptcy, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were the celluloid and real couple they never – and always – were.
In this show written and directed by Tiago Rodrigues, Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz are the here- and-now duo of what they were there-and-then. They are and are not Antony and Cleopatra. They are Antony seeing the world through Cleopatra’s eyes. And vice-versa. Always vice-versa. Vice-versa as a rule of love. Vice-versa as a rule of theatre. This show is seeing the world vicariously, through the sensibility of the souls of Antony and Cleopatra.
Credits:
Text: Tiago Rodrigues with quotes from William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra .
Direction: Tiago Rodrigues
With: Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz
Set: Ângela Rocha
Costumes: Ângela Rocha, Magda Bizarro
Lights: Nuno Meira
Music: excerpts from the soundtrack of the movie Cleopatra (1963), composed by Alex North
Artistic collaboration: Maria João Serrão, Thomas Walgrave
French translation: Thomas Resendes
English translation: Joana Frazão
Set construction: Decor Galamba
Technical director: Cárin Geada
Stage director: Catarina Mendes
Operação de som: Frisson
Subtitles operation: Rita Mendes
Production Management: OTTO Productions - Nicolas Roux & Lucila Piffer
Executive Production on the original creation: Magda Bizarro, Rita Mendes
A creation by the company Mundo Perfeito (2014), supported by Portuguese Government and DGArtes, co-produced by Centro Cultural de Belém, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Temps d’Images. Artistic residency at Teatro do Campo Alegre, Teatro Nacional de São João and alkantara. With the support by Museu de Marinha.
Special thanks: Ana Mónica, Ângelo Rocha, Carla Nobre Sousa, Carlos Mendonça, Luísa Taveira, Manuela Santos, Rui Carvalho Homem, Salvador Santos, Toninho Neto, Bomba Suicida
Recommended age: 12+
Duration: 80 min. (without intermission)
Show premiered at 4th of December 2014, at Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (Portugal)
Tour dates:
7 – 8 December 2025: Potenza (Italy)
17 – 18 December 2025: La Coursive Scène Nationale La Rochelle (France)
7 – 16 January 2026: Théâtre National de Bordeaux en Aquitaine, Bordeaux (France)
More information:
Nicolas Roux – OTTO Productions
nicolas.roux@ottoulouse.fr
Photograph: © Magda Bizarro
