Theatre: antony and cleopatra

Saturday 24 July 1999 00:02 BST

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What do the following have in common: Frances de la Tour's Hamlet, Bette Bourne's Lady Bracknell, Alasdair Sim's Amelia Fritton - headmistress of St Trinians. They're all great drag performances. Quite understandably, female members of Equity dislike it when directors elect to do all-male productions of plays but all-male Shakespeare does at least have the justification of being authentic performance practice, all women's roles having originally been played by boys. Which brings us to Antony and Cleopatra. There is no other actor (of either sex) who looks so at home on the Globe stage as Mark Rylance (left), so the thought of him playing the woman who dies with an asp clasped in her grasp is genuinely exciting.

The Globe Theatre, Bankside, London SE1 (0171-401 9919) from tonight

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