Julius Caesar
The American Repertory Theatre takes a crack at Shakespeare’s great political play Julius Caesar and hits one out of the park.
The story is familiar to anyone who ever took a high school English class: Caesar has returned to Rome in victory after defeating Pompey, a fellow Roman, in a struggle for the leadership of Rome.
Pompey’s defeat is taken hard by some, an Caesar is seen as a tyrant in the making; an embittered comrade, Cassius, heads up a conspiracy within Caesar’s own ranks to assassinate him. The portents leading up to that act, which is a turning point in history, form the eerie backdrop to the psychologically tormented ruminations of Caesar’s closest friend, Brutus, who finally agrees to be part of the plot. The aftermath, no less unsettled, sees the Roman citizens rise against the conspirators, who are defeated in battle by Caesar’s general, Marc Antony, together with Caesar’s nephew, Octavius Caesar, who would succeed his uncle as Rome’s ruler----and first Emperor. The Roman Republic vanishes in a stroke (or, arguably, 33 strokes: the number of stab wounds that the conspirators deal out in killing Julius Caesar). The Roman Empire, with all its notorious madness at the top, is to follow.
There’s simply no way to stage a production of Julius Caesar in this country and in these times without the machinations and manipulations of the plot and the characters reflecting, and commenting, upon our own dangerous course as a nation.
But where a less thoughtful director than Arthur Nauzyciel may have sought a 21st century idiom with all the appropriate modern hallmarks of power (broad, red neckties and Blackberries, maybe), Nauzyciel, a native of Paris, takes a broader, deeper context as his palette and chooses to adopt the look and style of the late 1960s. It’s appropriate: the world is already in flux, and the national psyche is in turmoil, when the assassination of a great leader marks the point of no return. Nauzyciel is far from the first artist to lay a finger on the fast, thready pulse of today’s America and diagnose the 1960s as the still-undigested source of the trouble, but he might be the first to make the thrilling link between this play and the serial events of the 1960s that haunt us still.
The play’s production is mesmerizing, especially in the first half. Scott Zielinski’s lighting is atmospheric, dreamlike, sometimes carrying a tone of surreal trippiness, other times intimating some urgent and yet shapeless threat: in keeping with the production’s emphasis on the color red (wine, blood, broad swath of carpet covering the entire stage to suggest both celebrity and violence) the lighting in the second half, when Brutus and Antony clash in battle, is a deep, penetrating red, a miasma of red suitable for the end of the world or, at least, the fruition of spectral revenge.
The costumes (by James Schuette) and scenic design (by Riccardo Hernandez) mesh flawlessly. With a few pieces of ’60s-style furniture, the play’s world is complete and iconic. A couch, chair, and lamp sketch out Brutus’ (Jim True-Frost) apartment, and a long white drape suggests a window looking out, panoramically, over the city; Brutus’ wife, Portia (Sara Kathryn Bakker) emerges from the bedroom after a late-night meeting of conspirators, a royally lavender sheet draped around her in a style reminiscent of a toga but also domestic, relaxed, and sexy: the furniture shows us that Brutus is a man of simple but stylish taste, but it’s Portia who informs us that he’s a family man, a solid citizen and patriot, and a man of unfailing decency being propelled by his own sense of ethics toward a dreadful crime.
Bakker also plays the role of Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar (Thomas Derrah). A simple set re-dress accomplishes a transition that makes us feel that we’ve now across town in Caesar’s dining room as he enjoys breakfast after a night of omens: lions in the streets, Calpurnia’s fretful nightmares about murder. Lured away from his worried wife by the promise of a crown, Caesar brushes off all concerns about omens and auguries (in an inspired touch, he uses an intercom to check on what the soothsayers have to say about the morning’s session of divination using chicken guts) and strides off to the Senate building, where fate (and daggers) await him.
The play’s staging includes some truly strange, and yet wonderful, innovations. The assassination itself takes the form of a savage dance; a jazz trio (Blake Newman on bass, Eric Hofbauer on guitar, and Marianne Solivan singing) rounds out David Remedios’ sound design, which makes use of incidental music and period songs to good, moody effect; and the near-constant presence of Brutus’ servant, Lucius (Jared Craig), sometimes sleeping, sometimes watchful, and, in the second half, playfully suited up in a Superman costume, gives a sense of history’s very nature: moments can be observed, or ignored, and only later do their significance become evident. The depiction of Lucius as deaf and using American Sign Language, in this view, offers an intriguing sense that human beings may elect to see history unfolding or to avert their eyes, but when it comes to actually having a voice, our choices may be far more limited.
The inclusion of a suspended car in the staging, however, is a bit of inspiration that might not work as well in practice as in theory. When the car comes lowering down, hanging from too-slender-looking chains, to sway gently above the actors’ heads, it’s a distraction, and a mildly alarming one at that. What does it mean? Is it a too-literal symbol of the car crash that the conspirators’ plan has become (they thought, not unlike certain modern governments, that their ill-thought-out and ill-executed actions would be met with acclaim if they simply raised bloody hands in victory and chanted buzzwords like "Liberty!")? Perhaps, or maybe there is some other meaning to it, but I found myself expecting True-Frost, as he stood beneath the car, to be smashed to a pulp at any moment--a bravura turn were it to happen, but a sad thing to contemplate because I admire his work on the HBO drama The Wire.
Thomas Derrah, long an ART actor (this is his 110th production with the ART) keeps his Caesar understated: he dresses well, but he also ha a manner that is grounded, direct, and approachable. In an electrifying scene, his corpse picks itself up from the floor, chest gleaming with scarlet stains, and approaches the edge of the stage, there to unleash a spectral howl of anguish.
Mark L. Montgomery, as Cassius, seems specially cast to fit the character’s "lean and hungry" description: he layers Cassius’ anger and bitterness together with strains of guilt and insecurity. He utters the dialogue with a natural ease, as though Shakespeare were his first language: not an easy feat.
That fluent command of the language is not something everyone can manage, and certainly not all the time. Jim True-Frost sometimes sounds like he’s reading off a TelePrompTer, and James Waterston’s Antony, while marvelous in a track suit, or nursing a hangover, or circling the stage opposite a glowering True-Frost during Antony’s great funeral speech for Caesar, has a strangely affectless delivery.
No matter. This play simply refuses to stay on the stage: it reaches out and wraps up the audience, dissolving the world outside the theatre for a term of three hours that effortlessly evaporates.
Julius Caesar runs through March 16 at the ART’s Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Performance Schedule: Feb. 14, 17,19----21, 24, 27, 28; Mar. 2--6, 11--13 at 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 10, 16, 17, 23, 24 and Mar. 1, 2, 8, 15, 16 at 2:00 p.m.; Feb. 27 and Mar. 5, 12 at 10:00 a.m.
Tickets cost $39--$79. $25 advance tickets available for students; student rush tickets are $15. Seniors get a discount of $10 off; group discounts available. Tickets can be obtained online at www.amrep.org or via phone at 617-547-8300.
