Antony and Cleopatra review, National Theatre: Ralph Fiennes needs to loosen up in stirring revival of Shakespeare's epic drama

Didn’t they have back-masseurs in Ancient Egypt? Watching Ralph Fiennes’ intense, imposing but slightly too stiff-mannered performance as Antony in Simon Godwin’s opulent, lucid, initially slow-paced, finally stirring revival of Shakespeare’s immortal drama of middle-aged love and political strife, I kept wishing an attendant - or maybe Sophie Okonedo’s magnificently springy and contrastingly lithe ‘serpent of old Nile’ – could give the old boy a shoulder-rub.