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.

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 6 January 2018

Part of the RSC's Rome MMXVII season, this play is directed by Angus Jackson and features Alex Waldmann as Brutus, Martin Hutson as Cassius, Andrew Woodall as Julius Caesar, James Corrigan as Mark Antony and Jon Tarcy as Octavius Caesar.

The setting is notionally Classical (columns, and a foreboding statue of a lion mauling a horse, feature at the back of the stage in the first half, rather than any realistic evocation of sites such as the theatre of Pompey where Caesar's assassination actually took place; rough indications of open landscape for the second half - designer Robert Innes Hopkins); the costumes also feature togas and tunics, but also very un-Roman red calf-length trousers.

This helps establish the historical background, and allows for very fine visual effects when, for example, the conspirators move from being a group of symmetrically placed almost-statues to a mob of baying assassins. It also gives added effect to Julius Caesar's stately arrogance, while allowing us to see the human frailty it is meant to conceal (a certain elderly deafness as well as hints of the epilepsy referred to by Cassius). Andrew Woodall shows us the arrogance of the man who evidently will not need much more persuading to become a king.