This is getting to be a habit. As at the first night of Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women at the end of February, the houseful of punters for the eagerly awaited production of Antony and Cleopatra was evacuated from the Swan Theatre just as the play was getting into its stride or, in this case, more of a sensual slide after the fire alarm was triggered. Still, at least it wasn't raining this time well, certainly not in the Thistle Hotel opposite, where I waited again. Fifteen minutes later, having regained our seats, we smiled as director Gregory Doran, during a felicitous short speech, expressed the hope that the critics present would be reporting how passionate performances had set the stage ablaze.

Some duly did, which is hardly surprising (though the absence of any mention of the director's prompt perhaps was), for this splendid production the second offering in the Royal Shakespeare Company's ground-breaking Complete Works season deserves all the superlatives that can be heaped upon it. Never have I seen the rich poetry of the play so expertly delivered, and rarely relished such lucid exposition of the action which can be hard to follow, with so large a gallery of characters involved and its many shifts in location. Mr Doran's gift for eloquent treatment of his subject matter, which I have noted often before, is employed to startling effect again in a production whose rugged martial flavour is well reflected in the percussive music supplied by Adrian Lee.

The casting in the title roles could hardly be improved upon. Harriet Walter presents a Cleopatra who is at once astonishingly sexy, supremely intelligent, politically savvy and always far too much in love with herself for it ever to be seriously supposed that her affair with Antony is more than a consummately successful piece of play-acting. She is also every inch a queen and, what's more, one in the full Egyptian mode here. Dressed in full fig for her date with the fatal asp, her loyal attendants Charmian (Golda Rosheuvel) and Iras (Emma Jay Thomas) by her side, she suggests the serenity of a monarch at her coronation rather than a suicide.

Patrick Stewart, meanwhile in an all-too-rare return to the stage gives a portrayal of Antony as subtle as it is compelling. Grizzled and timeworn as the great commander clearly is, part of him remains the near-god he once was in others' estimation as well as his own. It is clear why Enobarbus (the excellent Ken Bones) has been faithful to him so long, just as it is why the breach eventually has to come. A more gutsy than usual Octavius from John Hopkins, an affecting portrait of his sister Octavia from Mariah Gale, and the cruel abuse (that flayed back!) of his emissary Thidias (Nick Court) are other notable features of this fine production.