CUSTOM has it that if 13 chairs are assembled in a room, a teddy bear should be put on a 14th. Thankfully, director George Costigan was spared this dilemma once his original cast for Sunday night’s rehearsed reading in aid of York Theatre Royal’s capital redevelopment fund dropped to 12.

Costigan was first involved in such a reading at the York theatre in 2012 when Freddie Jones, Toby Jones, Paterson Joseph and Niamh Cusack led his company for King Lear, where he was struck by the thought that Joseph and Cusack should couple up as Antony and Cleopatra.

Three years later, his wish came to fruition, bringing them together as part of a cast of “all my favourite actors” that included pantomime villain David Leonard as the arch Enobarbus; Matthew Rixon as a Yorkshire-voiced Maecenas; Charlie Covell as Charmian; Sally Bretton as Octavia; Richard Howard as Lepidus and father and son, George and Niall Costigan, as Proculeius and Octavius Caesar respectively.

Props and stage furniture were nil, beyond the dozen chairs arranged in an arc; scripts were held in one hand, for freedom of expression with the other, and actors leapt to their feet for each “stage entry”, scenes being announced by Costigan to the accompaniment of such music as James Brown’s It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.

Yes, the focus was thrust on Shakespeare’s gilded language, but even after only two rehearsals, there was a visceral physicality to the impassioned interplay, especially of the two leads, in a power play as potent as a snake bite.