Julius Caesar (again)

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 March 2018

Having so much enjoyed Nicholas Hytner's modern dress production of this play in January from a gallery seat, I decided that I just had to see it again as a promenader, milling about in the central acting area and being moved hither and yon by the stage crew (fully accoutred with headsets and security vests) as the demands of the staging required different rostra to be raised and lowered.

I'm extremely glad that I went again to see the play from this more involved perspective. Not only was it an excellent opportunity to see the actors from a closer position; it was also exciting to realise how cleverly the play had been streamlined for an uninterrupted two-hour running time, and to appreciate the logistical brilliance of the whole enterprise. 

The cast were even more impressive at close quarters - the intense intellectualism of Ben Whishaw's Brutus, the steely determination of Michelle Fairley's Cassius, the passionate energy of David Morissey's Mark Antony, were all powerfully rendered, while the crowd scenes were wonderfully managed so that we promenaders were part of the action but rarely required actually to do anything so vital that our inexperience would imperil the result. By this I mean that, for example, the crowd's cheering as Caesar progressed was almost entirely pre-recorded, so that our contributions (if made at all) supplemented the effect but did not create it. The most definite thing required of us, apart from keeping out of the way of the rostra and the stage crew's manipulation of furniture, was to crouch down in self-protection in the aftermath of the assassination, just as a crowd would be ordered to with the threat of armed assassins whose program was unknown. Where individual members of the crowd were needed to call out or to react specifically to the major characters, members of the cast were always on hand amongst us to deliver the goods.

It's a great production well worth its second view.

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 January 2018

Nicholas Hytner directs Ben Whishaw as Brutus, Michelle Fairley as Cassius, David Morissey as Mark Antony and David Calder as Julius Caesar in a modern dress production designed by Bunny Christie.

It was a risk to attend two productions of the same play within three weeks, especially a play which runs the risk of being comparatively flat in its second half - all too often the machinations of the civil war unleashed by Caesar's death fail to match the power of the assassination plot and Mark Antony's great funeral oration. However, the risk was more than justified - this production is so different from the RSC's, and so exciting in its own terms, that there was no fatigue in watching it.

Against

by Christopher Shinn

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 9 September 2017

Ian Rickson directs Ben Whishaw in this new play which investigates the ills of modern society through the mission of Luke, an IT billionaire, to 'go where the violence is'. Early in his 'project' he meets the parents of a young mass-murderer, hoping to discover something about the violence and perhaps to help them come to terms with it. In later developments, we see more of the people reacting to his 'project', rather than their direct interactions with him - indeed Luke becomes, against his will, something of a celebrity figure as his journeys across America are followed by the media.

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

seen at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York, on 25 May 2016

Directed by Ivo van Hove, with an original score by Philip Glass, the production features Ben Whishaw as John Proctor, Sophie Okonedo as Elizabeth Proctor, Saoirse Ronan as Abigail Williams, Bill Camp as Reverend John Hale and Ciarán Hinds as Deputy Governor Danforth.

The play, a presentation of the 17th century Salem witch trials widely seen as a criticism of the McCarthy-era prosecutions of communists, is here set in a fairly modern schoolroom with neon lights, which serves for all the settings specified by Miller's text (set and lights by Jan Versweyweld). The actors are dressed in old-fashioned but recognisably contemporary clothes, which interestingly serves to underscore the early modern formality of their speech patterns.

Bakkhai

by Euripides in a new version by Anne Carson

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 10 August 2015

This is the second production in the Almeida Greeks season (following 'Oresteia', reviewed in June 2015). It is directed by James Macdonald and designed by Antony McDonald, and features Ben Whishaw, Bertie Carvel and Kevin Harvey with a chorus of ten women (the Bakkhai of the title). Music for the chorus is composed by Orlando Gough.

Unlike 'Oresteia', which was more of an interpretation than a translation, Anne Carson's version of this play follows the original more closely (apart from a few sly anachronisms to emphasise the disorienting effect of Euripides' black humour). The production too reflects a good deal of what is known about the original style of performance. The three actors play all the speaking roles, while the choric odes are sung, and even when the chorus speaks it is usually in unison and the voices often become songlike. The obvious points of departure from 'original practice' (so far as it is known) are that the chorus is performed by women rather than adolescent boys, and that there are no masks. The visual presentation of the speaking characters is, however, prominently stylised.