IN PRAISE OF ‘ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA’

Southern California is seeing a lot of “Antony and Cleopatra” this summer. Jack O’Brien’s production has just opened at the Old Globe Theatre and Tony Richardson’s staging opens at the Los Angeles Theatre Center July 3.

“Antony” is also hot in London. Peter Hall’s production--his swan song as artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain--has been called his finest Shakespeare since his “War of Roses” cycle with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964.

Anthony Hopkins plays Antony and Judi Dench plays Cleopatra, and the critics have raved. Particularly for Dench, who doesn’t usually play glamour parts.

It’s not clear that she does here, either. But she’s clearly doing something right. United Press International’s Gregory Jensen:

“Dench is a magnificent Cleopatra. Her Egyptian queen is too old to rely on sexual magnetism alone. Instead she captivates by unpredictability, through moods switched faster than eyelash flicks. Her darting charmer gradually slows and darkens as the Roman coils tighten, and her death is infinitely moving.”

The Guardian’s Michael Billington was equally high on Hopkins: “A real old campaigner . . . for whom Alexandria represents fantasy and escape. When recalled to Rome he prowls the stage hungrily like a lion waiting to get back in the arena.”

Hilary DeVries in the Christian Science Monitor:

“These two stars create a dazzling light show. Theirs is a passion ignited less by physical attachment than a devotion born out of mature character. Hopkins and Dench are no starry-eyed, star-crossed lovers, but consenting adults brought down by their own natures.”

“I suppose all good things must come to an end,” producer John Gale told Reuters. Oddly, he was referring to “No Sex, Please, We’re British,” which is finally about to leave the London scene after having run more than 16 years.

American tourists will have one more summer to see this comedy--which, for erotic appeal, is as good as its name--at the Duchess Theatre. But it will be gone after Sept. 5.

This leaves “The Mousetrap” secure as the longest-running play in London (35 years). New York’s champ is “The Fantasticks” (27 years).

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE. Who would give an award to a Broadway show called “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940”? Why, the folks who bestow the annual Hercule Poirot Award, of course.

In an amazing coincidence, they turn out to be the same folks who are producing “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.” Publicist Jeff Richards explained--when found out by a Variety reporter--that the New York Times ad announcing the honor was just a “spoof.”

The New York Times ad department was not amused.

Actually, a Hercule Poirot Award for stage thrillers might be a very good idea. The new Broadway season will have an early contender--Charles Marowitz’s “Sherlock’s Last Case,” first seen at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre in 1984. It opens Aug. 18 at the Nederlander Theatre, after a break-in engagement at the Kennedy Center. Frank Langella plays Sherlock.

IN QUOTES. Anthropologist Brian Moeran, quoted in a review in the Times Literary Supplement: “The essence of communication rests not so much in what is said as in what is unsaid.”