STARTFORD, Conn.--The most significant aspect of the current is the fact that it is playing in repertory with Julius Caesar (reviewed here in a previous issue), whose story it continues. Thus one has the rare opportunity of seeing the pair of plays in order--even, as I did, in the course of one day.

Not only this, but both shows have been directed by Michael Kahn, who says they constitute "one work." They really don't, but not for want of separates the end of Caesar from the beginning of Antony, there was a gap of some seven or eight years in the writing, and the two works came out highly dissimilar dramatically and stylistically. Ceasar is austere in vocabulary, drivingly direct in line; Antony is verbally opulent and weak in plot. Caesar attempts less, does it magnificently, and is an enormously effective stage-piece; Antony embraces more than it can handle, with only intermittent success. Though Shakespeare never surpassed the poetry he poured into the later play, Antony is, skipping all over the place in a record number of 42 scenes, far from ideally suited to actual performance. We have here a linguistic masterpiece, but a theatrical failure.

It is a matter of eternal regret that Shakespeare never wrote a middle play to go with the other two. For it was during the interviewing months that Antony first met the Egyptian queen and allowed his professional career and moral duty to deteriorate. Here lay the stuff of real drama, the material for a play that could have been greater than either of the two Shakespeare left us.

Still, Kahn deserves high marks for trying to unify the two works. Both productions use the same basic raked stage, designed by Robin Wagner, and the Roman scenes in Antony enjoy the same upstage set as many of those in Caesar. Jane Greenwood's costumes for the Romans in both plays are the same or similar. And the three important characters who are present in both plays--Antony, Octavious, and Lepidus--have the virtue of being portrayed by the same actors.

Kahn cut quite a bit of text in Caesar. Although Antony is one of the longer plays in the canon, Kahn has made only a handful of tiny snips. He is to be commended for keeping the text almost intact, but censured at the same time for allowing so many scenes to drag. The result is a performance that, with one 15-minute intermission, runs to three and a half hours.

The stage history of Antony is almost entirely a lengthy parade of failures. The Festival's only previous involvement with the play, twelve years ago, made the dreadful mistake of importing Robert Ryan and Katherine Hepburn from Hollywood for the title roles. With all the good intentions in the world, these two players were hopelessly miscast in parts that require highly musical performers. This summer, Kahn has done better with his pair of lovers, but not well enough.

Paul Hecht is the current Antony, Young and smooth-shaven in Caesar, Hecht appears graying and bearded in the sequel, where he ages from 43 to 53. He looks fine in both plays. Vocally, however, he is unconvincing in Caesar. He is on the whole more persuasive in the second play. But in 22 scenes--and Hecht is not able to sustain his performance throughout. He nevertheless has some admirable moments--such as the nicely ruminative "There's a great spirit gone" passage; the speech beginning, "O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more and the point when his eyes go dull as he stabs himself following a false report of Cleopatra's death. Still, he does not live up to the bobility (or vestiges of it) ascribed to him by several of the other personages.

The role of Cleopatra has defeated almost all actresses who have essayed it. Among Americans, only Rose Eytinge was in full command of the part in the 19th century. When the play was mounted in 1937, the late John Mason Brown began his review with the celebrated comment, "Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra--and sank." In modern times, only Katharine Cornell has been highly acclaimed by both critics and public (in the 1947-48 season), and even she was somewhat over-rated. (British acresses have managed only a little better.)

Cleopatra is the most multi-faceted of Shakespeare's women. Chameleonic and maddeningly inconsistent, she reflects at some point almost every trait and emotion in the book. Women yearn to tackle the part, for it is to an actress what Hamlet is to an actor: the ultimate test.

So now we have Salome Jens. She doesn't sink, but she's riding in an awfully leaky barge. Dorothy Parker once wrote that Katharine Hepburn gave a performance that "runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." Miss Jens extends the alphabet perhaps to E, but this just won't do for a role that requires A to Z. Cleopatra is described as a woman of "infinite variety," but Miss Jens approximates this only in her series of what must be nine or ten different--and resplendent--gowns created for her by Jane Greenwood.

Miss Jens is pretty enough to enact the Egyptian, who ages from 29 to 39. But she is not queenly, nor is she sexy. She does not embody the fatal allure that could pull Antony off his course in the way Dido waylaid Aeneas. Vocally, Miss Jens lacks a sense of rhythm and musicality.

Her most noticeable shortcoming is an utter lack of a sense of humor. "Can Fulvia die?, "which is one of the most deliciously sly questions in literature, emerges as nothing more than a request for the salt. Actresses and directors are possibly misled by all the scholars who keep trying to increase the "four great tragedies" by one. We are not gripped by Antony and Cleopatra as we are by Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Lear; we remain relatively detached. In fact, there is enough satire in Antony to make it possible to stage the work as Shavian high comedy.

At any rate, Cleopatra's life should be fun; she must relish what she does in her anti-Roman freewheeling. She positively enjoys her self-inflicted death: and we are not saddened by it, but rather rejoice with her in thus outwitting Octavius. Miss Jens, however, traverses the play with little more than sober determination.

The role cries out for someone with the versatility, verve, sensuality, humor, and bearing of black actress Diana Sands. Which raises another point: although she is often described as pure Greek, the historical Cleopatra was actually of racially mixed ancestry and would today be classified as Negro. The opening speech of Shakespeare's play calls her "tawny," and she even refers to herself as "black."

If the Festival debuts of Paul Hecht and Salome Jens fall short of one's hopes, the same cannot be said of the debut here of Philip Kerr, who plays Octavius in both Caesar and Antony. His is classical acting of the first order. His three scenes as a 20-year-old in Caesar are enough to indicate his cool command of his craft. In Antony he has 13 scenes as the young triumvir who emerges victorious and will soon become Emperor Augustus. Kerr's acorn grows into a strong Oak.