Antony And Cleopatra (Bell Shakespeare)

While Antony And Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's late masterpieces - so touched with grandeur it's positively Homeric - it remains rarely performed. Audiences coming out of Bell Shakespeare's new production starring Catherine McClements and Johnny Carr will no doubt wonder why; it's as moving a portrait of doomed love as anything else the Bard penned, including the star-crossed lovers of Romeo And Juliet. It's a far richer play too, packed with a wealth of finely drawn and nuanced supporting roles, and an endlessly shifting tonal register - it changes mood as often as the "serpent of old Nile".

Artistic Director Peter Evans has eviscerated any hint of the sword and sandal epic; with a sharp, contemporary aesthetic, and plenty of Nick Cave on the soundtrack, it's effortlessly cool and highly efficient. The cuts are judicious and a consolidation of characters helps streamline the action. It's a tricky play in some respects - large pivots in the narrative occur offstage, and the leads display a staggering irrationality in their decision-making - but Evans wrangles it all expertly, and the effect is ultimately heartbreaking.

Anna Cordingley's set, as liminal as a Qantas lounge, is an ingenious oval enmeshed in cloth, with lovely colour-coordinated sofas and settees. Benjamin Cisterne's lighting is sublime, pulsing and shifting through the play's various aspects, while Max Lyandvert's sound design is brilliantly attuned. Nigel Poulton's movement direction, with the cast gently rocking as if upon the vagaries of the sea, is also beautifully judged. There's a sense of a team of artists, at one with a vision.

Antony (Carr) is part of the triumvirate of Rome, with Octavius Caesar (Gareth Reeves) and Marcus Lepidus (Jo Turner) - or at least he would be if he weren't spending so much time loving it up with Cleopatra (McClements) in Egypt. He's already losing credibility in the eyes of his soldiers, who refer to him as "the triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet's fool". His most loyal friend Enobarbus (Ray Chong Nee) is sticking by his man for now, but even he begins to doubt Antony's resolve.

When Antony's wife Fulvia dies, Octavius suggests a tactical match with his sister Octavia (Ursula Mills), enraging Cleopatra but also doing little to ease the tension between the two leaders. A common enemy in Pompey (Lucy Goleby) keeps Octavius' ambitions at bay for a while, but eventually Antony - with Pompey defeated and Lepidus crushed - will have to face his former co-ruler in war. Just how much of a help or hindrance Cleopatra will be forms the majority of the play's second half.

Cleopatra is one of the greatest creations in the history of literature, and it must be a daunting prospect for any actor, but McClements holds her own every step of the way. We get a fairly muted sense of her rages and cruelty (her tendency to beat and rail at her messengers is given a levity bordering on the flippant), but she grows magnificently in the role, and the final, defiant act is devastating. Carr is way too young for the grizzled hero, but he brings such a lovely hangdog poignancy, a sort of staunch inevitability to his demise, that his youth barely registers. Together, they make Antony And Cleopatra less about the decay of nobility and more about the nobility of decay.

There is fine support from Janine Watson and Zindzi Okenyo as the queen's gentlewomen, and a superb performance by Chong Nee as the tragically compromised Enobarbus. Reeves misplays Octavius completely; while Shakespeare wants the audience to see some nuance in the man, we still need to feel the Machiavel underneath the politesse, but Reeves gives no indication of it at all. It's a bland reading of the play's central antagonist, and threatens to throw the production out of balance.

It's a curious thing to see an artistic vision so consummately and effectively rendered, despite or perhaps because of its fundamental flaws. Evans underplays the centrality of command in the play, and he totally ignores the idea of contrast. The Rome and Egypt of Antony And Cleopatra are as different as Kansas and Oz - one cold, regimented and monumental; the other sensual, reactive and intoxicating  - but Evans draws no distinction between them whatsoever; it's almost impossible to tell when we are in one or the other. This should be devastating to the play, and yet strangely it isn't. The central roles are so strong, so profoundly moving and so expertly plotted, and the cast are so committed to Evans' interpretation, that we are left emotionally wrecked by these characters' "immortal longings". There couldn't be a more eloquent argument for the play's enduring relevance than that.

Bell Shakespeare present Antony And Cleopatra until 13 May at Arts Centre Melbourne.