Theater and Politics - From Shakespeare's personalities to clones of Silvio Berlusconi

Shakespeare's drama Anthony and Cleopatra is rarely seen on stage in Continental European theater. Shown at the THEATER BASEL under the direction of Christina Paulhofer in a German translation by Elisabeth Plessen, it earned a cool welcome by the Basel public and the press. However, the most virulent criticism came from those who deplored the balanced description of both the geopolitical struggle between Egypt and Rome and the private problems of the protagonists in the foreground of the play by director Christina Paulhofer.
In fact, Paulhofer's interpretation was proof of the modernity of Shakespeare's view of political drama. The great difference between today's political scene and the one Shakespeare described lies in the fact that political leaders nowadays seldom pay with their lives for what they do to their own people - or to others. Most probably,they will die in their beds. At least, this seems to be the case for the senior autocrats Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe. Others, like Silvio Berlusconi, will try to achieve eternal youth through biomedical tricks and might one day become immortalized either by virtual digitalized dummies who can continue to play their role, to do their dirty tricks and to make silly jokes ad infinitum or, who knows, by clones.