Ralph Fiennes

Film

Theatre

TV

Awards

Reviews

Antony and Cleopatra

★★★★★ “In RALPH FIENNES and Sophie Okonedo, Simon (Godwin) has two actors who are willing to re-think the leading roles. The result is engrossing, unexpected and quite riveting. Both a Roman triumph and an Egyptian feast. Both are instantly fascinating. Antony is haunted by his age, by his depletion of prowess, but his eyes still have spark and fire. Most Antony’s shout; FIENNES doesn’t, finding in the language instead a sort of harried sorrow, a constant searching that makes sense both of the constant descriptions of the man’s nobility but also of the strangely botched, half-comic nature of his tragedy. At climactic moments, the space clears, leaving FIENNES and Okonedo alone with their griefs, their fears and their love. Which is absolutely as it should be because as this fine, confident production shows, this is an endlessly relevant play about an entire world – but also about two people who are fighting their own mortality and trying to love one another.”
Whats On Stage - Sarah Crompton

★★★★☆ “RALPH FIENNES and Sophie Okonedo are at the top of their game as the self-deluded lovers. FIENNES is at his best in charting Antony’s tragic decline. He magnificently captures Antony’s shame after the battle of Actium and has the capacity to illuminate every phrase: when he says “this pine is barked [ie stripped] that overtopped them all” he gives an unforgettable image of a man confronting his own desolation.”
The Guardian – Michael Billington

★★★★☆ “Director Simon Goodwin embraces the sensuous beauty of Shakespeare’s Roman romance with an elegant contemporary aesthetic and seriously impressive staging. While RALPH FIENNES and Sophie Okonedo bring immense talent, warmth and wit to the besotted General and his queen.”
Culture Whisperer – Lucy Brooks

★★★★☆ “Antony and Cleopatra comes across with such walloping emotional immediacy […] thanks to the blazing star power of RALPH FIENNES and Sophie Okonedo. Two legends, increasingly conscious that they are both past their prime, Antony and Cleopatra rev up their fabled relationship with beautiful, bare-faced hyperbole: “Eternity was in our lips and eyes…” […] FIENNES is brilliant at communicating the scalding, ranting shame that Antony feels at corrupting men through his military failures. To his perception, it’s as though the earth is disdaining his tread.”
The Independent – Paul Taylor

★★★★☆ “RALPH FIENNES and Sophie Okonedo achieve a simmering chemistry in the title roles. Their push-pull relationship always has an air of danger, yet it’s also a thing of beauty, with moments of quivering delight. Okonedo is magical in the first half, and FIENNES dominates the second. His Antony is memorably intense. He’s a soldier with a mighty reputation, who still believes that he can cut it on the battlefield, but there’s a gulf between the legend and the reality. FIENNES nails the overemphatic masculinity of a man hoping to prove he’s not past his prime, and is at his best when straddling the boundary between being amusingly suave and uncomfortably louche.”
Evening Standard - Henry Hitchings