The Egyptian

When Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh decided to do Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra for last summer's Festival of Britain, Stage Designer Roger Furse jokingly suggested that they do Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra as well. They smiled at the idea but were quickly haunted by it; and in due time the two Cleopatras became the sensation of the festival. Long before they opened in Manhattan last week, to rave reviews and a $900,000 advance, they had become a Broadway sensation as well.

The thing was such a bright idea, it comes off such a brilliant stunt, it boasts in the Oliviers so much added aura, that the superlatives can't help spilling over into what should be more temperate zones. The productions have their admirable virtues; the stars have their expected lure. But this is no such event as was Olivier's Oedipus Rex on his last visit to Broadway. And far from blotting out a recent Caesar on Broadway (with Cedric Hardwicke and Lilli Palmer) or a recent Antony (with Godfrey Tearle and Katharine Cornell), the present productions will be constantly--and not always favorably --compared to the earlier ones. What is really important is doing two such plays together. Shaw's emerges as so good that what should be stressed is how vividly it differs from Shakespeare's rather than how it necessarily falls short. It sets some of the sharpest prose in the modern theater against some of the greatest poetry of all time; Caesar underscores the impotence of wisdom where Antony dramatizes the tragedy of folly.

Kitten on the Sphinx. On the first of the two nights, audiences saw a Cleopatra who was a mere frisking kitten with claws.

Caesar is the central thing in Caesar and Cleopatra, the central thing for Cleopatra herself. The musing middle-aged stranger she addresses, between the paws of the Sphinx, as "Old gentleman," keeps her his doting pupil in queenship, but will not risk his heart. A Roman eagle Caesar is, but like the eagle, bald, and wearing a laurel wreath as a toupee. He is in any case beyond wearing laurel wreaths for show; he knows too well that the only true conqueror is the conqueror worm. Caesar is that type that always fascinated Shaw, the successful man of action. And Shaw molded Caesar nearer to his mind's desire: made him notable not for warmth but for lack of heat, not for humanity but for hate of inhumanity.

Yet the resemblances between this Caesar and Shaw mean less than the differences between this Caesar and actual Caesarism. This Caesar's is roughly a philosophy of Right Needs Might, but the philosophy is not, with him, a pretext for dictatorship. Shaw's Caesar, if not history's, has no other course for checking the violence, the will-to-rule, the lust-to-kill of everybody--the young Cleopatra not least--he encounters. Indeed, the exultantly upraised swords and the hysterical shouts of "Hail Caesar" at the final curtain are less Caesar's moment of triumph than of defeat. The voice of reason is always drowned out, all too soon will "Ave, Caesar" become "Et tu, Brute."

Rich in comedy, farce, opera and extravaganza though the play may be, at bottom it is melancholy and autumnal. Actor Olivier, indeed, represents Caesar as stooped, weary, elderly--an excellent piece of acting, but a doubtful interpretation. For (what surely Shaw never intended) Olivier's Caesar is a man past being tempted by a minx, rather than one who declines the gambit for fear of being hurt. Vivien Leigh's Cleopatra is a willful, naughty, coaxing, charming child, more fully characterized than Lilli Palmer's perfect cuddling kitten, but almost as much enfant terrible as budding jemme fatale.

Serpent of the Nile. The second night brought far vaster sweep, but greater sprawl. A marvel of language, full of what Coleridge called Shakespeare's "angelic strength," Antony with its 42 scenes is also full of history's tumultuous, haphazard movement. Not angelic wings, but seven-league boots are needed for this panoramic drama of conquests and civil wars that is even more a chronicle of power than it is of passion. The characters are uniformly worldlings, plotters, palter-ers, betrayers; even Antony is destroyed by lust, not love; and Cleopatra is as devious as she is passionate. Antony and Cleopatra is really less the sequel of Caesar and Cleopatra than of Shakespeare's own Julius Caesar. And in this checkered struggle for domination, it is not wisdom that triumphs in the end (Caesar lies bleeding in the Capitol), nor idealism (Brutus is dead by his own hand), nor passion (Antony and Cleopatra are dead by theirs): what triumphs is the cold calculation of Octavius Caesar.

Understandably, the Oliviers' Antony is a high-romantic one, less of the world than of the world-well-lost. Olivier as Antony is impulsive, audacious, angry, half-aging lion and half-untamed whelp; he is not--as Godfrey Tearle was so brilliantly--an assured leader with the weakened fiber and amorous susceptibilities of late middle age. As Antony, Olivier is a good actor, but not the architect of a commanding role. Vivien Leigh's Cleopatra is an all-too-believable enchantress --mercurial, irresistible, even royal; only not of Shakespearean depth and stature. Actress Leigh mistakes mere emotionalism for intensity; she intones--while half-violating -- some of her greatest lines.

Though the supporting cast is not nota ble, the mechanics of production are. Un like Hamlet or Macbeth, which starts racing with the very first scene, Antony lacks pickup. But Director Michael Bent-hall, linking scene to scene with processional figures on a revolving stage, gives the play constant flow. Designer Purse's sets are good-looking and practical; Herbert Menges' music has genuine appeal.

Shaw's play -- which is actually the bet ter stage piece -- provides the better evening. The scope and magic in Shakespeare's that Shaw cannot achieve, the production can only partially convey.

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