Is Antony and Cleopatra really a tragedy? Harold Bloom recently argued that it is "funnier than any of the great Shakespearean comedies". And that is the line taken by Giles Block's refreshingly swift, airy production: for once, some genuinely funny things happen on the way to the monument.
The tone is set by Mark Rylance's exuberant Egyptian queen: the chief gain of having a man play the role is not any spurious "authenticity" but the way it highlights the character's histrionic excess. Cleopatra is a born performer who likes to theatricalise the state of love: not since Judi Dench have I seen anyone bring out so clearly Cleopatra's humour or capacity for self-dramatisation.
Rylance is first seen in low-cut, lime-green gown, tumbling auburn wig and military headgear: a reminder that Cleo and Antony get a good deal of erotic fun out of cross-dressing. But Rylance's key quality is an itchy restlessness: in Antony's absence he is forever hurling himself at cushions or hopscotching around the stage in a self-conscious demonstration of sexual fever.
He is at his funniest, however, in the two scenes with the messenger who brings news of Antony's marriage. Rylance pulls a knife from his knickers and hauls the chap round the stage by his hair before scoring a huge laugh by promising, "I will not hurt him". In order to quiz him about Octavia's height and demeanour, Rylance even dons cothurni to add cubits to his stature and lend himself the appropriate majesty.
But does the stress on comic role-playing prepare us for the long adagio of Cleopatra's end? In fact, Block's production implies that even the business of pulleying Antony up to the monument was meant to raise laughs as well as a body. But Rylance shows a remarkable ability to switch moods turning "The crown o'th' earth doth melt" into a sky-rending cry of despair and treating Cleopatra's death as a solemn ritual in which robes and headgear disguise human frailty and a tufty, balding scalp. It is a fine performance suggesting Cleopatra remained a consummate actress to the last.
I suspect, however, that Antony is a much harder part to play: few actors have conquered it. Paul Shelley here gives a perfectly decent performance, bringing out the character's sexual obsessiveness and self-conscious decline: he makes something touching out of Antony's indictment of Caesar for "harping on what I am, Not what he knew I was". But it is just that hint of past grandeur that I miss in his performance. The ideal Antony should be, as a critic once said of the aged John Philip Kemble, "the ruin of a magnificent temple in which the divinity still resides".
For the rest, it is an evening of ups and downs. On the credit side, the pace is fast, the Jacobean costumes unobtrusive and Mark Lewis Jones as Pompey and Benedict Wong as Menas offer well-spoken support. On the debit side, John McEnery seems ill-at-ease as Enobarbus, Ben Walden is an overly neurotic Octavius and certain staging ideas need to be re-examined: the off-stage battle behind the closed walls of an inner recess suggests kids fighting in a broom cupboard.
But although I still find Shakespeare's Globe a difficult place to watch a play - seated in the lower gallery you become unduly aware of the chatting, chaffing and canoodling going on in the yard in front of you - on this occasion the show overcomes the sundry distractions. Lightness and laughter are the keynotes, suggesting that Antony and Cleopatra should be placed on the Shakespeare transfer-list and moved from the tragedies to the comedies.
