The RSC’s Bardathon may have begun with a production of Shakespeare’s first great love-tragedy that included, among other oddities, a denouement in which Romeo and Paris did a beefy tap dance over Juliet’s body; but the next lap in the year-long race, which is Gregory Doran’s revival of his last great love-tragedy, is simple, clear, direct, pacey and pretty well everything that those who enjoy either drama or marathons would wish.

Barely ten minutes into the evening, a fire alarm went off, causing the Swan to be evacuated for 20 minutes while the local brigade checked it out. They found nothing untoward, which wasn’t surprising, for the cause clearly was the all-electric whoosh of Patrick Stewart’s Antony and Harriet Walter’s Cleopatra as they bounded and squealed across the bare stage: she tying him to her with a napkin, he seizing and kissing her and then, to the boot-faced dismay of the assembled soldiers, hurling a Roman emissary to the ground.

With that genial charisma of his, Stewart strikes me as a born Antony. Towards the end he visibly ages and deteriorates, his red-and-gold armour replaced by a sweat-stained vest, his natural smile transformed into a wan scowl. Towards the end, too, he has his distraught moments, as any Antony must. Yet even when he’s lying mortally wounded on the ground, he manages a wry, knowing chuckle when he learns that Cleopatra, whose manipulations have always amused him, has faked her death. He’s humorous, resilient, large-spirited, offhandedly arrogant — and in command of everyone except, as it sadly turns out, himself.

Except himself and, of course, Cleopatra. Maybe that’s why the lady has such a hold over him. At all events, Walter makes up for what she somewhat lacks — overt sensuality, Ptolomaic ferocity, the intensity to turn sighs into storms and tears into tempests — with her quick, quixotic switches of mood. One moment she’s teasing, the next dreamy, the next malicious. And whether or not there’s a queenly wig covering her slightly scrubby hair, you can’t doubt her capacity for love.

Doran’s production contains some nice detail, such as a Lepidus who isn’t just patronised but persistently interrupted by the two abler triumvirs, and gets a fascinating performance from John Hopkins as Octavius. He’s not the usual chilling automaton but an ambitious, edgy, insecure young man for whom Antony is a father figure he can’t help admiring yet resents for his dominance and effortless ability to expose his own immaturity. But that’s an interpretation that needs a strong Antony: another reason for applauding Patrick Stewart.

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