JUST as great kings and emperors must have awaited, with bated breath, a glimpse of Cleopatra’s beauty, so the Liverpool Playhouse audience anticipated their first look at Kim Cattrall’s face.

The opening of Shakespeare’s battle-led love story was teasing – bombastic music heralding her appearance on the stage she herself once watched as an eager teenager.

Her back to the audience, she turned and slowly removed the gold mask obscuring her famous looks, every bit the untouchable queen.

Yet the Sex and the City star’s Cleopatra was warm and very human, as she flitted between the manipulative Egyptian ruler’s many personalities and cries real tears for her lost lover.

First teasing, then impetuous, now calm, then cruel – her feline performance was utterly captivating.

Not for one second did she let the mask slip.

Motivated by extremes of emotion, Jeffrey Kissoon’s Antony was played with no half measures.

Throwing himself from one mood to the next with a teenager’s inconstancy, he was at one moment besotted with Cleopatra, the next leaping into marriage with Octavius Caesar’s sister; declaring the future doomed or lustrous.

A powerful performance certainly, but not a subtle one.