Shakespeare by the Sea’s Antony and Cleopatra may look like a middle-aged Romeo and Juliet (give or take one asp), but beneath its stormy surface is an equally tempest-tossed tale of politics and the mêlée between duty and desire.

Maybe that’s why this latest telling of the tragic love saga still resonates: even if empires don’t hang in the balance, we all still struggle daily with the conflict between passion and reason.

Shakespeare knew that one sensibility doesn’t always give way to the other–and he realized that when it does, disaster often ensues. And cue Marc Antony, ruler of the eastern Roman Empire, whose affair with the Queen of Egypt has him … well, distracted.

He’s played by a regal Matthew Breher, looking like he walked straight off the set of 300. He exudes the characteristics of the torn king with every grandiose hand motion, hair flip and longing glance. (Every hair flip? Oh, yes.)

The death of Antony’s wife and the threat of war bring him home to clash with Rome’s other ruler, Octavius Caesar, who believes Antony is, well, thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy. Antony marries Caesar’s sister in a compromise, but eventually flees back to Egypt and Cleopatra’s arms (Suzanne Dean).

Her sleek black hair and blunt bangs make her look the way we’re accustomed to seeing our queens of Egypt, but the speed of her delivery–and her often overpowering voice sometimes made the Bard’s dialogue incomprehensible.

Then there’s the matter of chemistry between Breher and Dean: we’d like some, please.

They’re bolstered by an effective supporting case; Stephen Wood gives a stand-out performance as the messenger Thyreus–delivering his lines a la James Earl Jones, with an earnestness that will make you wish they’d given him a bigger part 400 years ago.

But the title characters just aren’t steaming up our glasses the way they should–and maybe that’s the biggest tragedy of all.

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