By William Shakespeare
Directed by Atri Banerjee
Designed by Rosanna Vize
Music by Jasmin Kent Rodgman
Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
Saturday 25th March 2023, 13.15
CAST
The online is alphabetical. The actual programme is way better in putting them into sections.
Nigel Barrett- Julius Caesar
Jimena Larraguivel – Calpurnia
Thalissa Teixeira – Brutus
Nadia Kemp-Sayfy – Portia
The conspirators
Kelly Gough – Cassius
Matthew Bulgo- Casca
Gina Isaac – Decius Brutus
Robert Jackson – Cinna the Conspirator
Tom Kanji – Metellus Cimber
Pedro Leandro- Tebonius
Katie Erich – Ligarius
The triumvars after Caesar’s death
William Robinson – Mark Antony
Ella Dacres -Octavius Caesar
Tom Kanji- Lepidus
Senators of Rome
Matt Ray Brown – Cicero
Joshua Dunne- Popilius Lena
Tribunes of The People
Mercedes Assad – Marullus
Robert Jackson – Flavius
People of Rome
Annabel Baldwin – soothsayer
Merceds Assad – Artemidorus
Joshua Dunn – Cinna The Poet
Jamal Ajala- Lucius
Niamh Finlay- Pindarus
Joshua Dunn – a carpenter
KatieErich – a cobbler
PICTURES ADDED THURSDAY 30th. Oddly Brutus is missing from the photo gallery.
The good news: this is touring the country until June. It’s not isolated in Stratford. You can judge for yourself.
Press night is next Tuesday. I have been castigated in the past for reviewing before press night, but I have my own rule. Reduced price preview? Do not review. Unfair. Full price? (£75 each at the front, or five times the price of Poole Lighthouse last Tuesday). You are entitled to review. This was full price. You charge the price, you take the flak. No pictures ahead of press night, but will add as they become available.
Read the cast list. Ten women, Nine men. This is the play that teachers always said should be a set book only in boys’ schools, because there were so few female roles and the plot wasn’t one they found appealed. It’s one of the most male plays of all. A female Brutus? A female Cassius? I’m going into the theatre needing some persuading. After a female Prospero at the RSC and with a female Shylock coming, is it not going over the top?
There’s always the issue of Shakespeare and history and no one can tweak the text enough to revise his versions. You’ll never get members of the Richard III Society to admire Richard III or French patriots to love Henry V. Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy paints Caesar as the genocidal mass murderer that he actually was. We have to dismiss this and regard this vicious Roman without saying He had it coming!
The play …
The set is grim. A grey bare stage with a grey projection screen. What set?
At the start a trombone player appears with a singer and a guitarist, up on high above the screen. There is a vigorous dance stomp routine start with wolf howls, loud trombone roaring, wails. Vague grey shapes are projected on the screen. Clouds, flowers. Powerful start. This is going to be exciting … then my eyes run over the cast who are dancing. Costume? What costume? Apparently there isn’t any. Is it going to be one of those where they appear in modern day clothes and get changed … no.
There are issues with this production, but having a female Brutus, Cassius, and Octavius is the least of them.
I am delighted the RSC is touring productions. That’s a plus, though they never get down to the South Coast. When you tour Shakespeare, a lot of the revenue is getting in large school parties. This was on their minds. On school trips, kids buy pencils and erasers as souvenirs. Here the badges are ready for the pocket money at just £1 too. I bought one.
So, this is a play about self-harming (Portia), assassination by stabbing (Caesar), mob murder (the poet Cinna), suicide (Cassius, Brutus) and the havoc of letting loose the dogs of war. Violent stuff. So first bad decision. No weapons. No fighting. Weapons will be mimed. Fights will be dance like.
Then what about blood? It will be a black gel. See the tears on the poster. It will get all over everybody, and in the second part, all the costumes will be streaked with it, but there will be no fainting among the squeamish in the audience (which happened with Titus Andronicus at The Globe once). It’s like the adverts for sanitary protection which show pads absorbing light blue liquid.
Then the worst thing is not the female plotters at all, but the concept of Julius Caesar.
They came to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
He is a man in a pale yellow Primark shirt with his vest showing at the neck line, what with him getting on in years and heeding advice to keep his chest warm. He has grey trousers and a beard. A plump, late middle-aged fellow. Almost jolly and avuncular. Are they deliberately undermining the role? No actor (and this one is very good) could do anything with the part dressed like this. So, I consider as the play progresses. Maybe it’s because polyester shirts are cheaper to replace than launder what with all that black gel flying around, so they just picked some up in bulk. But no, this is a deliberate choice, because in act two, where he’s dead, he wears an identical scarlet shirt with an identical scarlet undershirt. Those are not easy off the peg items. So they have been designed. Heaven forbid, some one has commissioned them and maybe even had them made.
This sartorial choice utterly wrecks the play even before it gets under way. Caesar must have charisma, and power. This is the third RSC version of the play since 2012. In both the others, you felt the power. When Greg Doran directed in 2012, in modern dress set in Africa, the dictator appeared with guards, clearly a man to be terrified of. Caesar is a man who it is said killed a million in Gaul as deliberate genocide, then sent another million into slavery. In Dordogne, he had both hands cut off every man in the town. That’s not even getting into murdered rivals. If I were doing it in modern dress in 2023, I’d have a bare chested Putin lookalike strutting on with Wagner Group mercenaries either side of him. You need to know why the plotters fear him, and why they fear him becoming king. They don’t even have guards accompanying his appearance, and that’s really easy to do.
Then you have to show that, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Putin, Caesar is popular with the mob. I saw that they had a community chorus accompanying in every town. Ah! They’ll be the mob, I thought. Greg Doran had lots of extras in the African Caesar milling around the stage to be the mob. No, they’re six women in long black frocks who come on and wail. The mob is the soothsayer (Annabel Baldwin) running around in red tracksuit bottoms, more especially in the Mark Anthony speech … she does it very well, actually, and it’s a good counterpoint to Mark Anthony.
Caesar is killed by having black gel smeared on him and dancing a bit. Thankfully for the actor, he goes to fetch an identical yellow shirt, folds it neatly smears it with black, lays it on the stage and nips off. The shirt is now dead Caesar. That’s much better for the actor than lying there for half an hour but considerably less dramatic. Or not dramatic at all. Now everyone has black gel on hands and arms. It’s spreading over costumes. Except Cicero, who is in a suit, and of course is not one of the stabbing consuls. He lost most of his role too. I think of Wiliam Brown in the Just William series who formed The Black Hand Gang. I’ve decided in my mind they are The Black Hand Gang.
Then a timer is projected with PAUSE and it counts down for 2 minutes for no apparent reason The director’s programme note makes much of this timer. It also counts down the interval.
On movement, the cast do that thing when they form a line, one behind the other. Then they wave their arms up and down in unison, then peel off in different directions, one by one and circle. We did that in a 1985 show ballet pastiche, and I think we started doing it in mid-70s shows. My granddaughter was in a dance school Peter Pan (Michael) last year, and they did exactly that sequence about five times in the show. It’s a choreographic cliché, so clichéd that I am amazed to see it in a professional theatre in 2023, not that it’s the first time I’ve seen it at the RSC. I thought Matthew Bulgo was outstanding as Casca, but wondered why he was made to run round in circles very fast.
The positive about the show, with its worst-ever costume design, and its terminally boring set, is line clarity. I see the programme credits Alison Bomber with ‘voice and text’ and if the work on lines is hers, she deserves the most credit in the production team. It is extremely rare nowadays to see a play where everyone articulates clearly, projects well, and uses pausing effectively. No one is too quiet, and most of all, no one gabbles (listen to some 1960s Shakespeare recordings – they spoke incredibly fast). They make sense of every line here. On the way home we discussed this, and I said it would make a better audio book than 90% of stage plays. You get accents … Irish for Kelly Gough as Cassius, Spanish for Jimena Larraguivel as Calpurnia, but they’re no hindrance.
You do get the RSC’s obligatory deaf actor, in Jamal Ajala as Lucius, servant to Brutus. When he’s being sent on errands or delivering messages it works well, though it must be a chore for the other actors to learn how to sign. I think it was a major mistake to have him carry the important ending with Brutus’s death in sign language, but then the running onto swords in mime was feeble anyway. I say this often. Shakespeare is about language. Period. Hopefully, an actor using sign language won’t be compulsory when the new regime takes over later in the year.
The big publicity thrust was Thalissa Teixera as Brutus. It struck me that having made that conceptual choice, it made sense having Cassius as female too (Kelly Gough). It might have jarred with one female, the other male. They’re both very good at delivering the parts. Octavius (Ella Dacre) works too. The problem is the concept which falters. On words, we get changes to she, her, woman, but then they come up against that pivotal Mark Anthony speech. ‘Brutus is an honourable man’and we get some ‘She is an honourable man.’ I’m sure that someone will lecture me on LGBT+ gender fluidity as the intention, but it’s not, is it? It’s someone running through the text (possibly the one I just praised on clarity and articulation) and changing pronouns, and then running smack into one of the most famous speeches in the entire works of Shakespeare, and realizing it’s not going to work. At all. It comes across overall as confused.
On interpretation, Brutus has her wife, Portia, and also cuddles up to Caesar so I suppose she’s the B in LGBT. (Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times has naughtily started calling it BLT +). Cicero’s letters suggest that Brutus was at least a little effeminate- Cicero advised Brutus that it was a disaster not to have slain Mark Antony.
In the first half, being female wasn’t too much of a problem. The thing about the play is intrinsically it works up to Mark Anthony’s speech, but then the second part is very hard to bring off successfully. Too much action to show on stage. At least this avoided women running about in Desert Storm uniforms with balaclavas, waving guns, a ploy that has ruined so many Shakespeare battle sequences. The first part was one hour forty minutes. The second part was forty-five minutes. Surprisingly, while my mind was filling with criticisms, the 100 minutes didn’t seem long. It often does, but then in Julius Caesar the first part has all the good bits.
I thought the problem was that as plotters, Brutus and Cassius worked fine. As beleaguered generals they didn’t, and … oh, this is going to get me into trouble … men and women panic differently. They came across as female panicking, which didn’t fit the military leaders at Phillipi.
On the Big Speech, friends, readers and country persons (No, they didn’t do that. It was me), William Robinson as Mark Anthony made the most of it. Plenty of space and pausing, accentuated by very good cheerleading by the Soothsayer. Sitting on the edge of the stage at one point to confront the listeners.
The set could be revolved to show a bare inner room (Brutus’s pad) in part one. In part two it also revealed open metal stairways, rather West Side Story, populated one by one with the dead. Not a first, but not a bad idea either.
There’s a dance between Brutus and the ghost of Caesar to a recording of Caetano Veloso’s Nine Out Of Ten which is credited properly and praised in the programme.
Overall?
Thrilled as I am that it’s bringing Shakespeare to the provinces, I’m saddened that some kids first experience of Shakespeare will be this. It’s just about the worst Shakespeare production we’ve seen at the RSC. I’m not faulting a single actor, though I think the concept put them in roles that were an uphill struggle. I think the music was interesting / good. If someone had said, ‘Do Julius Caesar with Thalissa Teixiera as Brutus and Kelly Gough as Cassius’ I would see it as an interesting challenge as a starting point and one where a good version could emerge. However once you’d destroyed the role of Caesar and removed all the violence, and smothered everything with black, the whole concept loses sense. It didn’t work for us at all. The RSC desperately needs its incoming Artistic Directors to shake it up. I’ll give it two stars because the clarity of articulation adds one.
** (My companion is *)
The programme
Much better than the dreadful The Tempest programme. We get a director’s note. Adrian Poole on the language, and an article on regime change. Back to RSC standard.
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
JULIS CAESAR
- Julius Caesar – RSC 2012
- Julius Caesar – Globe 2014
- Julius Caesar – RSC 2017
- Julius Caesar – RSC 2023
THALISSA TEIXARA
Yerma, Young Vic, 2017
The Broken Heart, by John Ford, Wanamaker
The Changeling by Middleton & Rowley, Wanamaker 2015
KELLY GOUGH
Don Carlos, by Schiller, Southampton MAST 2018
PRESS REVIEWS – ADDED TUESDAY (review was Sunday).
***
Dfiza Benson, The Telegraph ***
Dfiza Benson: Puzzling staging and unnecessary melodrama obscures the chemistry and clarity of the acting in Atri Banerjee’s wobbly new production
Mark Lawson, The Guardian ***
Mark Lawson: Startlingly, stabbed Caesar bleeds black blood, possibly hinting at the oil greed of capitalism, which stains his assassins for the rest of the play.
(ME, no, it really really doesn’t. He also never bleeds black blood, hands smear black gel on him. Mind bogglingly inane review which is shocking from a normally good critic. If Julius Caesar is about oil companies, and The Tempest earlier was about the effect of global warming on island communities, then we, the uninitiated audience, have truly lost the plot.)
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ***
Michael Davies What’s On Stage ***
Michael Davies: This is unquestionably a director’s show, chock full of visual imagery, stylistic devices and wacky tangents. Some might call them gimmicks. The result is a production that bears some resemblance to Shakespeare’s great political conspiracy, yet oddly leaves the actors with nowhere to go, constrained by the director’s and the designers’ concepts and, it appears, with little steering on the real substance of the work – the text – despite the presence of two dramaturgs … What’s most disappointing is the absence of any sense of power. Caesar’s hold over the masses is glossed over almost in passing, while the machinations of his lieutenants and their internal wrangling with their consciences are so slight as to be almost non-existent. Mark Antony (William Robinson) is a lightweight, with nowhere near enough manipulative cunning to win over the people, and Thalissa Teixeira’s Brutus and Kelly Gough’s Cassius bicker inconsequentially before falling on their swords – sorry, hands. … It’s a shame that the RSC has selected this production to tour the nation. It does neither the company nor Shakespeare any great favours as an introduction to newcomers,
(I thought Michael Davies review accurate- except given what he says, *** is generous).
Simon Tavener, The Reviews Hub * 1/2
The audience is left without an understanding of the nature of Caesar’s tyranny, his popular appeal or, indeed, the forces that were employed in achieving and sustaining power. Without those fundamental underpinnings, the production lacks the clarity necessary to understand the motivations of the conspirators whose actions are so central to the piece. Costumes do not give any clue as to the status or role of any of the characters. The set gives little sense of time or place.
**
Clive Davis, The Times **
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail **
Julius Caesar at the RSC … throwing as it does a cast of rookies and debutantes to the lions in another solemnly PC vision of the Bard … Kelly Gough is a ferocious Cassius. Like a rugby prop forward, she puts her shoulder to Shakespeare’s oratorical verse to shove Thalissa Teixeira’s long, languid Brutus into leading a conspiracy against Caesar. Sadly, though, Teixeira remains stubbornly lovely and decisively vague. Perhaps that’s because she is enjoying a perfect life with her vibrant wife, Portia …. What’s missing from this impeccably PC, orderly and odourless production is a sense of chaos. For that we must look to Shakespeare’s grammar, expurgated throughout and reaching its nadir in the bathos of Mark Antony’s verdict on Brutus: ‘She is an honourable man.’
Nick Wayne,. Pocket Sized Theatre, **
*
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times *
Shakespeare so bad you’ll laugh. This production is a comical jumble of modern clichés that made a low budget Winnie The Pooh movie seem like Strindberg – so inept as to be comical
Chrisparkle, online **
Nigel Barrett plays Caesar as an atypical military hero … and he appears as a someone more likely to enter a dad dancing contest rather than being a feared General.
COMMENTS
Please note that while I don’t censor the comments, I do have to “Approve” them so there is a delay in them appearing (particularly if I’m asleep!)
Peter Viney's Blog 
Really interesting review, thanks. We haven’t seen much Shakespeare and I’d like to see more, but we saw a version of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe 2 years ago and both my wife and l struggled with the modernity of it all! (Although my wife was entranced at her first experience of the bard tbh) Is there anything wrong with wanting the RSC to now and then put on a production just as it was meant to be with relevant casting and costumes? I appreciate them reaching out for a new audience, but don’t you think sometimes they’re just a bit too clever (smug?) for their own good? Please, let us have some traditional Shakespeare as it was meant to be seen and heard; not every play needs to be given a modern twist, surely?
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Saw it on Friday when the understudy debuted as Brutus. I have no issues with gender swap roles. In fact, it can add to the production. Alex Kingston as Prospero was superb and brought an extra dimension to the character and the relationship with her daughter. However, this was the most disappointing production I’ve seen at the RSC. It felt very amateur and inspired by the Haus of Gaga at times! We left wondering what we had seen. Aside from Cassius and Mark Anthony, casting choices were dubious. I also saw a number of seats empty after the interval. Such a pity.
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We got to Stratford and bought a programme at 10.30 on Saturday before going for a walk to ease off the 150 mile car trip. When we bought it there was the understudy slip, but they said everyone was hoping Thalissa Teixiera would be back, but they didn’t know yet. She was.
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Added under my posts page:
Ann Johnson-Hook
It is quite simply dreadful
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I went with four others, two of whom had come from Holland to join us, to last Saturday’s matinee. We were all disappointed by this production and would agree with your comments. Except that we would not agree with your comment that Brutus and Cassius were very good at delivering their parts. We thought they were both over the top, particularly Cassius with repeated pointy gestures which became tedious, and I’m afraid they did not portray seasoned political plotters in a nuanced way. In short they lacked the necessary gravitas. I can see that this may be a casting issue.
Caesar’s death was most peculiar, especially the whoopy jumpy/dancing. He came across as quite benign, so why all the fuss and necessity of assassinating him? The ensuing black oily smears rather than blood were odd and at odds with Brutus exhortation to ‘wave our red weapons’.
Having said all the above, the production did give us food for considerable discussion even though none of us liked the production. We will be returning for Cymbeline in April.
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My companion also thought Cassius was waving her arms about excessively. I hadn’t thought that in the first part, but definitely agree in the second. Even a poor RSC production is subject for discussion. As Cymbeline is Greg Doran’s last play as director there, I expect them to pull out all the stops for it.
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I thought it was a sparse and strained presentation of what is normally a very clear story. This is what happens when a cast are trapped by concepts: they end up playing to a set of ideas in a director’s head. Inter-character dynamics are weakened. Actors operate in separate imaginative spaces. The play becomes a set of solo instrumentals rather than a symphony.
I agree that Annabel Baldwin was good. Outstandingly good as the voice of an entire crowd. Looking forward to seeing her act again.
But overall: beware the Ideas of March.
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We saw it on Saturday. The first half was so terrible that we nearly left during the interval. In the end we decided to stay until the end as “It couldn’t be worse than the first part”.
Wrong. It was.
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Absolutely spot on . The costume design was absolutely appalling
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My wife and I saw this production on Monday 20th March; the second performance. We agree completely with your review. As seasoned theatre goers and Shakespeare fans, this was probably the worst production we had ever seen. The group behind us left during the second interval. “Second interval,” you ask? Yes, because about 10 minutes after the end of the first interval the production suddenly ceased and the actors fled the stage. We then had the farce of stage crew coming on to clean the black gel from the stage (there really wasn’t any), and for us to be given a disingenuous explanation that it had been an issue. In reality, either one of the actors had dried up, panicked, or had a sudden attack of ennui at the whole sorry performance, and frozen on the spot, or there had been a set malfunction. Perhaps the latter, as, despite the floor being polished shiny clean, we were warned by one of the producers (not the director who didn’t show his face) that the play would finish, but with a reduced performance. Those behind left at that point, as did a whole cohort of school-children from the upper circle, whose first experience of Shakespeare is likely to have marked them for life, and not from black gel. As to the performances themselves, we thought from the offset that we had stumbled into an Am Dram rehearsal space. The lack of costumes was an insult given the cost of tickets, as was the lack of any substantive set. The use of sign language by one of the actors gave us flashbacks to Lassie Come Home, given their co-actor’s need to repeat the line just signed. The speech at the end given completely in sign language, which you mention, was without any translation. He might have well just stuck two fingers up to the audience. Overall, a self-indulgent production that showed an utter disrespect to the paying audience. We were thanked after the considerable (20+ minutes) production delay for being kind. To loosely paraphrase Cicero, “All men are slaves who have already paid for their tickets.”
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The whole thing is an absolute disgrace. Are they really going to have the cheek to tour it round the country? There will be an outcry.
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It’s weird that no other reviews were up- the Stratford and Birmingham papers are often ahead of press night as are other bloggers. I was afraid it was only my view but the Comments suggest it’s widespread. This was up Sunday. As it comes at the top of a Google search, someone at the RSC will have seen it and the comments. They’ve had Monday and Tuesday – will they have managed to sort anything out before press night? I can’t see they can change costumes, set, choreography or the appalling concept of Caesar. It’ll be interesting to see what the press say.
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Thanks for your reply. Nice to have a conversation going. It keeps me from total despair about what is happening today.
I wrote a not dissimilar review of Richard III, perhaps not quite as awful as JC but totally representative of what is happening in director led theatre. Will this production really tour??
RICHARD III at the RSC
MORE SHOUT-SPEARE THAN SHAKES-SPEARE?
First, the good news. The costumes are in period, and the cast sport magnificent wigs, cloaks, and armour from the RSC’s formidable wardrobe department. The play is not set in an Afghanistan warzone or a pre-war mental hospital. The men’s parts are not ostentatiously played by women, or vice versa. The set and the lighting are unobtrusive and excellent, the prison gates that sometimes form the background are appropriate.
And why shouldn’t the lead be played by an actor with a deformed arm? No reason at all. But then why should the action begin with a troupe of dancing characters kicking a balloon around to a background of raucous band music? Why is Shakespeare’s finest opening speech thrown away by Hughes as he squeezes noises out of the balloon? The winter of our discontent is designed to set the play up for the audience, but this rapid lightweight rendering fails to make a mark. The bunchback toad, epitome of malice, presents as a pleasant looking young man with no sign of “a mountain on my back” and hardly a hint of evil about him. His is a shadow no self-respecting dog would bother barking at.
Oh, here come the rest of the cast again, in full cry now. Every line, however inconsequential, is delivered at shouting pitch. Ceaseless empty anger fills the theatre. Screams rise to a crescendo when a character’s death is announced, or some terrible perceived injustice, undecipherable by the audience amid the gabble, is proclaimed. All emphasis is no emphasis, non e vero?
There are occasional moments of relief as in the dialogues between Richard and Lady Anne, or the murder scene of Clarence in his offstage butt of Malmsey. And after three hours of high- volume grief and rage, we are rewarded by the brilliant closing battle scenes. A beautifully choreographed ghost scene with his victims haunts the king’s tormented sleep, and the horse formed by the actors in the evocative battle scene is reminiscent of the great “Warhorse.”
But from the opening it is as if the director is actually ashamed of the wonderful words of Shakespeare, some of which have indeed been cut. Is he frightened that a new generation of playgoers will not understand them?
Is this why the supporting players have to provide nonstop action to hold the audience’s wandering attention? They walk up and down on meaningless missions, start to go offstage then change their mind and return, and take all their entrances and exits at a breathless run. They mime reactions to the dialogue in a vain attempt to help us understand whatever is being shouted about. God knows we are grateful for some guidance, as the narrative is far from clear throughout the play.
(Incidentally it is jarring to hear such words as ever, over, and even adding an unwanted extra syllable to lines, spoiling the metre. Surely it is clear they were pronounced and often spelt e’er, o’er, and e’en in Shakespeare’s day.)
All in all, the production is fatally flawed by the character portrayal of Richard of Gloucester. He should chill us with his evil ambition at every appearance and leave us cheering at his overthrow. But Hughes, though a competent and engaging actor, is scarcely more threatening in this role than the choirboy who sings in the background.
The opinions of RSC ghosts like Laurence Olivier, Ian Holm, Ian Richardson, Anthony Sher and other greats can surely be imagined. Sher’s riveting 1984 portrayal of the evil Richard was one of
the great RSC productions.
Sadly this is not such a one.
Richard Vaughan Davies
6 August 2022.
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Bravo! We went on Saturday night and agree with every word you say, although we wouldn’t have put it so eloquently. We had the understudy Brutus to boot. Interestingly, I received a survey from the RSC on Sunday specifically asking about the production. I was forthright in my responses.
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We saw it on the opening night; I couldn’t agree more! It’s the butchering of Shakespeare’s language which upsets me the most… ‘daring’ casting isn’t the issue (we saw Ian McKellen as an 80-something Hamlet in Windsor and he was magnificent), but changing the words is crossing a red line for me. And it looked so cheap and tatty.
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We all naturally review against an image of what we think the play OUGHT to look like, but I wonder why we tend to think that perspective is MORE valid. Faced with an alternative perspective it’s uncomfortable. Is the RSC supposed to present “tradition” then? Shakespeare in Elizabethan costumes and togas? Why?
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No one asked for tunics and togas. The review points out that Caesar needs to be charismatic and powerful. The 2012 Modern Africa version worked. I mention a Putin lookalike with Wagner Group mercenaries. The costume is appalling, but not because it;s ‘modern.’ See the film of Coriolanus. Modern dress is not the issue,
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I have seen all the Shakespeare productions at the RSC for the last 10 years. This is by far the worst. Your review is spot on, well, perhaps a little generous towards the production. I have never sat in the audience there and heard such muted applause. It was hard not to feel sorry for the unfortunate actors as I looked along the rows around me where I observed that probably 30% of the audience found themselves unable to put their hands together to clap. It is a good thing that the audiences at Stratford are normally so polite and that the reaction was not more extreme. The RSC needs a really good shake up if it is to survive, let us hope that the new creative management will be able to acknowledge the increasing errors of the last few years and address them. We certainly do not need more of the same. To return to this production of Julius Caesar – to describe it as execrable is to use a more than generous adjective. We hope that we shall not see its like again (but I fear we will).
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Of course you could say this production was very traditional as like in Shakespeare’s day at the Globe there was not an elaborate set, and actors did not play roles according to their gender
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No one seems that worried about the actors gender. I said that was the least of the issues. Also, while Shakespeare’s company may not have dressed in togas, we don’t know, we do believe they wore costumes handed on from nobility, so kings would be kingly. The concept completely took away any power from Caesar. The choreography was poor. The Globe never uses a revolving set.
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> The concept completely took away any power from Caesar
Rather the point, no?
We all come to this and other Shakespeare with ideas of what it is in our own heads, and the plays serve to challenge those by presenting an interpretation that may reinforce or challenge what interpretation existed in our head. But i don’t find this interpretation of Caesar in any way problematic, the Caesar of the play is never the slayer of a million Gaul, many interpretations may choose to present him that way, but is that the Caesar that Shakespeare wrote?
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Did you see it? What did you like about it? Shakespeare would have studied Cicero’s letters to Brutus. Shakespeare knew Caesar had ‘kingly power.’ Cicero pointed out that the conspirators were wrong not to have killed Mark Antony:
Cicero: After the death of Caesar and your ever memorable Ides of March, Brutus, you have not forgotten what I said had been omitted by you and your colleagues, and what a heavy cloud I declared to be hanging over the Republic. A great pest had been removed by your means, a great blot on the Roman people wiped out, immense glory in truth acquired by yourselves: but an engine for exercising kingly power had been put into the hands of Lepidus and Antony, of whom the former was the more fickle of the two, the latter the more corrupt, but both of whom dreaded peace and were enemies to quiet. Against these men, inflamed with the ambition of revolutionizing the state, we had no protecting force to oppose.
They didn’t even bother to suggest Antony, Brutus and Cassius were warriors in the second half. Just the same cheap nondescript clothes.
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> Did you see it?
I did, last night, press night – i enjoyed it, quite a bit actually.
> What did you like about it?
The performances, as you pointed out, were superb.
> Shakespeare would have studied Cicero’s letters to Brutus
Perhaps, i genuinely have no idea however i am remembering someone (ben jonson?) describing Shakespeare has having “little latin and less greek” so i’m not sure its a given.
Whether or not he did is moot, i think, I come to this play having very little knowledge of Julius Caesar as a person, as a leader, and don’t doubt that he was formidable, but the JC that Shakespeare writes isn’t, in my humble opinion, that man.
I very much enjoyed your review btw. While not agreeing, as I say, I enjoyed the play, it was nonetheless a well written piece, thank you.
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I agree with most of this review, but would add that Cassius being played as someone that cannot speak without crouching in an ‘imploring beggar caricature’ was too comical to let any production succeed. I thought the music was great, but it could not save this worst ever RSC production from its bottom ranking. It should be buried.
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Several comments on my home page short piece directing here. I’ll copy and paste them:
Richard Bailey
I have never been to a Shakespeare play before and thoroughly enjoyed the production. The acting was superb in particular the female leads who played Cassius and Brutus. I am a Shakespeare convert!
Nicola Ward
Totally awful. Shakespeare would be Totally offended. The actors looked like they had just wondered in off the street. Really disappointed.
Tim Howarth
Poor in many respects. I agree with much of what Peter says, but also felt that having the two main parts of Brutus and Cassius cast as both gender-blind and age-blind was a step too far. No fault of the actors, but young women playing those parts lacked weight. A mature woman such as Alex Kingston would have been fine.
Graham Paine
Truly appalling production in almost every sense. Definitely the worst RSC production l have ever seen in 40 years of visiting Stratford – just about everything was wrong.
Tim Claye
A totally self indulgent luvvies production, the worst I have seen in 68 years of coming here: a theatre where I have seen the greats perform outstandingly, indeed quite recently. I regret paying £215 to watch this but then, as mere audience, its clear I don’t count.
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Incredibly, the rsc site lists two people as responsible for the costumes. Did one go to Primark and the other make tour of the local charity shops?
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What an excellent review! Thank you. “She is an ambitious man” still rings painfully in my ears. I have never seen a worse Shakespeare production, and for the RSC to host it just shows how far its standards have fallen. I sense that the play was commissioned by RSC not because of its quality, but because of all the boxes it ticked as RSC seeks approval from the likes of the Guardian and the BBC. We have been going to RSC regularly for 16 years. No more.
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Sadly I completely agree with your review. Except I would add that both Cassius and Brutus were very weak performances – we struggled to hear them in the upper circle (on 2z March).
It felt like an early rehearsal performed by amateurs. Indeed I expected to see the actors holding their scripts. Disappointing – even at just £20.
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In the interests of offering a different perspective, I must say I enjoyed this production. My partner felt there were some relatively minor aspects which left him a bit bemused (the lack of the dead Caesar’s body on stage post-assassination didn’t work for him and he couldn’t understand what the 2-minute pause was about) but otherwise we both felt the bare stage and back wall projection worked well – I think the lack of props and fake swords etc left the focus on the actors themselves and helped expose them to the intensity of the horror and chaos they had unleashed on themselves and their relationship to each other; this helped us feel the force of their struggle to deal with the unplanned consequences of having committed a terrible act. And we felt the military and withering flower images on the back projection pressed home the tragic relevance of these dynamics to modern geopolitics.
I took the ‘black gel’ to be oil, reflecting the sense that that is a ‘life blood’ for the functioning of modern society, a key driver of imperial power politics and a symbol of death, destruction and chaos across the 21st century globe.
I also don’t see the lack of fake weapons as ‘feeble’. Theatre is about suspending the literal, whether it’s a sword that you know isn’t real or a mime of a sword I don’t see that it makes a difference.
As for the costumes, I can’t understand the extreme negativity expressed in the comments I’ve seen. It seems to me the politicians were dressed in ordinary neutral modern day office clothes; this made it relevant and contemporary for modern young audiences – shock! horror! – and reflected the fact that everyday violence occurs in the modern corporate and political world. An aspect which no one has mentioned is that the dead seemed to be clothed in colourful almost serene costumes; suggesting a release from the dark chaos endured by the living and this for me was an interesting idea.
I won’t labour at length on the gender issues and the quality of the acting; suffice to say from my perspective I just don’t see the point of getting hung up on whether a part is played by a man or a woman; it’s down to whether an actor of whatever gender can pull it off in his/her performance and I thought this cast generally did a decent job. I do agree gender swapping can lead to some tortuous textual issues but for me changing a few pronouns here and there doesn’t ruin the text; I would have changed ‘honourable man’ to ‘honourable woman’ in Mark Anthony’s speech. I don’t regard that as doing grievous damage to the text and for me it’s the kind of thing which allows Shakespeare to respond to current approaches to gender, but I can almost feel the shudders and the deep intake of breath from the purists as I write this!
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If the black gel was oil, it went straight past most people commenting (except Mark Lawson in The Guardian,( but I never got that( I got ‘no red blood for sales to school parties.’ Ordinary neutral modern day office clothes? The conspirators are senators. Compare the cabinet / shadow-cabinet / SNP as the equivalent. None of them are dressed in bottom level Primark casual. Cicero had a suit but collar turned up and tie adrift. Look at the shoes. Only Cassius could even approach ‘modern corporate.’ The costume is truly unforgivably bad. BTW, most commentators mention seeing a lot at the RSC. Elizabethan or Roman costume would be a small minority of productions since 2012. That was never the point. If you want a play about Big Oil, ‘Julius Caesar’ isn’t it, but I commend ‘Fracked!’ by Alistair Beaton instead (Chichester 2016, reviewed on this blog).
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Hi Peter, Lucila’s partner here – re Cicero; yes, collar turned up and tie adrift because he’s a politician floundering in the chaos. And it seems to me that many politicians nowadays deliberately dress down or seek to look casual (note Boris Johnson’s carefully cultivated chaotic appearance.)
But deeper for me is that these politicians (like many contemporary ones) seem out of their depth and are losing coherence, and their appearance reflects that – that’s the point for me. I accept that means that there is no coherent style to latch onto, but for me much of this play is about what happens when society loses that coherence and turns in on itself.
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Mike, quite right about politicians- Obama and Cameron cemented the no tie style for top leaders, but even so, they don’t wear stuff like this play, left, right or middle. Boris’s appearance is part of his act. I never criticized the actors, nor the gender switch. My ire was reserved for producer, director and costume and set designer and at points, the choreography. I still think sign language is daft for Shakespeare, apart from a couple of bits where it might not matter. Years ago, a partially sighted friend who loves theatre for the language said pointedly, ‘But what about me?’
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My neighbour went to see this production of JC a few days ago , and left at the interval . He would have left earlier but was sitting in the middle of a row. Is costume becoming unimportant to stage drama? Earlier this month I went to see Henry V ( Globe production ) at the Royal Theatre in Northampton and the cast looked as if they had gone to the nearest jumble sale and grabbed just anything- there was no sense of a co-ordinated style , colour or hint of any historical age. Is this now the norm ? BTW , I have a ticket to see Julius Caeser but having read the reviews I am having second thoughts .
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The Globe had a thing under Michelle Terry where apparently actors went to the costume store and chose whatever they wanted personally. Most RSC productions eschew Elizabethan, Roman or ‘kilts and claymores’ (Macbeth). But they do choose an era, and have a coherent style – Cinema Paradiso 1940s Italy for Taming of The Shrew for example, or 1914 for love’s Labour’s Lost and 1919 for Love’s Labour’s Won (Much Ado).
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Just left at the interval. Excruciatingly boring and tedious production. So WOKE it’s BROKE.
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