Who knew? Staunton, Virginia is the place to get your Shakespeare fix.

Staunton, Virginia (pronounced Stanton by locals) is about 2-1/2 hours away from Alexandria and D.C. by car, 3 hours by train (it’s a lovely ride), and feels like a world far away the District and its surroundings. The population of the Augusta County town is about 25,000, and the downtown area is full of lovely buildings from centuries past, without a single chain store in sight. There’s a movie theater, beer joints, antique shops, restaurants, and a pretty great ice cream parlor. The Heifetz International Music Institute is located there, and the town hosts an annual two-week classical music festival in August which draws an international audience. Perhaps most surprising, given its size and location, Staunton is home to the American Shakespeare Center (ASC), and the sole recreation of Shakespeare’s Blackfriar's Theatre, an enclosed venue (unlike the Globe) that originally was part of a 13th century monastery until Henry VIII dissolved such things. In 1596, James Burbage purchased the property and turned it into a playhouse.

According to ASC’s website, “Shakespeare’s company began performing there in 1608, charging twelve times as much for tickets to the indoor theatre as they did for the outdoor, but the original Blackfriars burned in the 1666 Great Fire of London.” In 2001, Staunton, also known as the Queen City, rounded up $3.7 million and recreated the theater, and in the process a home for the American Shakespeare Center, which has been around since 1988, originally formed as the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express. Over the past 30+ years, the troupe has created a mind-boggling history of achievement: performing for nearly two million people; producing all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays (many of them more than twice), 36 works by his contemporaries, for a total of 286 different productions and over 5,500 performances (and counting). That’s amazing.

This past Sunday I, my wife, and a friend of ours attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra at ASC’s Blackfriar’s Playhouse. It was the first time for all of us, and we all agreed it won’t be our last. The theater is intimate (seating around 300 people), beautifully realized, comfortable, and possesses excellent sight lines. It’s also easy to park within walking distance. But lovely theaters don’t automatically translate into worthwhile theatrical experiences, and it was on this latter score ASC made an outsized impression.

Antony and Cleopatra is a good, maybe even great, Shakespeare play — said no one ever. And yet ASC’s production is an unusually entertaining three hours, presented as part of a season nicknamed “Roman Holiday,” which includes Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and G. B. Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (plus the world premiere of Julianne Wick Davis’ new musical The Willard Suitcases). Credit most of this production’s success to Zoe Speas as Cleopatra; in the first half she’s shrewd, funny, smart and sexy to the point of almost overwhelming the rest of the cast, but then Sharon Ott’s direction steps in and lets everyone else shine as they can. And many of them shine very bright, including Brandon Carter (Mardian/Scarus/Menas), Michael Manocchio (Caesar), Sylvie Davidson (Iras/Octavia), and Annabelle Rollison (Alexas/Eros/Proculeius). As Marc Antony, Geoffrey Kent delivered a performance that wasn’t lacking in any way I can readily articulate, but it left me wanting something more from him. Perhaps it was a stronger, more obvious and compelling attraction to Speas’ Egyptian Queen — for a guy who throws away everything for desire, his wasn’t all that understandable, even if Speas made it quite plain why any other outcome didn’t stand a chance. Also notable for sheer versatility was Chris Johnston (trumpet/Enobarbus/Clown), and the ease with which understudy Michael Ryan Blackwood stepped in as the Soothsayer/Ventidus/Pompey, book in hand, for Ronald Roman Melendez at the last minute. Murell Horton’s costume design served the entire cast well, especially Speas, Carter, Davidson, and Constance Swain. Overall, the cast’s enunciation and delivery was impressive.

Ott’s direction, at least on an initial viewing, doesn’t strive for any particular insights into the fated triangle at the center of the story, which is drawn largely from Plutarch. Here it’s played more for dramatic and comedic effect, and on that score mostly succeeds, even as the action grows increasingly hard to follow in the second half as allegiances and statuses shift in a constant flux. Speas’s Cleopatra appears conflicted yet calculating, containing an internal aspect missing from the rest of the cast, but her character has less to do in the play’s second half, so she too, never quite comes into full view much beyond how we already perceive Cleopatra in the popular imagination. That’s a pity, but blame Shakespeare and Plutarch for that (okay, let’s just blame Shakespeare), as the cast is game to do whatever Ott asks of them. Also entertaining are the musical numbers performed by the cast before the performance and during intermission, chosen to compliment the play’s themes, in this case including Cake’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell,” Lizzo’s “Worship,” and best of all, Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” which made the few of us in the audience who recognized the lyrics laugh out loud as soon as we realized where the band of actors was going.

Rating: strongly recommended.

Antony and Cleopatra plays in repertory at American Shakespeare Center through November 30. Plan your visit to Staunton well, and you can see ASC’s entire season in a single weekend. Tickets and more information here.

At top: Zoe Speas, photo by Lauren Rogers Parker.
Other photos of Zoe Speas and Brandon Carter, Antony & Cleopatra cast by Lindsey Walters.