Julius Caesar (RSC)

gosh, this looks straight and literal.....

Q> Why was the statue embarrassed?

A> Because its stone wasn't dressed.

At an earlier RSC Julius Caesar press night:

SHAKESPEAREAN ACTOR: Friends, Romans, countrymen, Lend me your ears.

CROWD MEMBER (the very young Penelope Keith): 'Ere, 'ave an ear!

This was quoted in press reviews at the time.

Review of RSC Julius Caesar

The first surprise about this production was that it was set in and around ancient Rome. I've seen a few productions of Julius Caesar before and in my experience the play has often chosen to treat themes of power, politics and control as universal to any time and place.


The second surprise was the interaction with Brutus and Cassius. This was played the opposite way to normal. Brutus seemed to have made up his mind about Caesar from the start. Brutus’ silence in that first conversation with Cassius seemed not to be disapproval and doubt, but listening for how much Cassius was willing to say. This meant that Cassius’ words couldn’t be an attempt to manipulate Brutus; the scene came across as Cassius honestly stating his opinion.


The performance continued in this way. With remarkably little charges to the script the stereotypes for Cassius and Brutus were turned around. I was impressed with the way the acting and direction did this. Cassius wasn’t a cardboard cut out villain; he was a twitchy character with righteous anger. Brutus wasn’t a noble character; he was a weak one who had a habit of touching what seemed to a necklace with a family emblem whenever he spoke of honour.


The two scenes I got this impression the most were when Brutus seemed nothing more than thoughtless and unhinged while saying ‘…And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood…Let’s all cry ‘‘Peace , freedom, and liberty!’’ and how he then granted Mark Antony his permission to speak. (Act 3, Scene 1) Then in Act 4, Scene 2, while Cassius and Brutus are arguing in the tent Cassius seemed angry that his ideas of right and wrong had been broken, while Brutus was trying to set himself up as the next emperor.


My normal impression of the first half of Julius Caesar is mainly of Brutus pacing up and down the stage. In this production I felt there was never any moral dilemma about killing Caesar. Brutus' character is the best equipped with lines able to be taken as a decision being made on stage. The lack of a dilemma was particularly noticeable from Brutus.


I felt that the whole play was weaker for this. The lack of any dilemma from the characters’ point of view made the first half seem a little flat and procedural for me in the audience.


Another thing which gave the performance less force was that it was played for laughs. While this approach did manage to bring out more individual characters from the conspirators, especially Casca, it gave the play a less thoughtful tone. For example, Casca's pause before stating that he is a Roman (Act 1, Scene 3) made the line funny because it was a failed attempt to remain anonymous. I liked this because it showed that Casca had just thought about whether he wanted to have his identity known, rather than just repeating that he belongs to a roman ideology. However, introducing laughter to the line 'how many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over' (Act 3, Scene 1) simply undermined one of the central themes of the play, murder.


On the whole, I’m glad I saw this Julius Caesar, but I think the interpretation of Cassius and Brutus lost the performance almost as much as it gained.

The audience laughter on the line delivered as comedic when dipping their hands in Caesar's blood - yes, it certainly was thought-provoking for me too.

I felt uneasy about laughing at this moment of a political murder - the action doesn't in itself sound that funny. And it wasn't a catharsis laughter because the tension hadn't been thoroughly built up to this point - I agree there was a tone of 'when not if' about Brutus' decision making.

So the laughter seemed mainly to emerge from the actor's delivery, self-consciously stepping aside of the acting role in that moment. But this wasn't exactly a Brechtian performance, so why the self-conscious referencing?

However, the line did make me think about how it might have been delivered in 1599, when political aspiration could be ended at the edge of a sword. Then the line becomes much more dangerous (and still not funny) - I imagined these words delivered to a crowd at the Globe (old style, spoken direct to audience), where it could become a real suggestion - perhaps swords were a lot more public in 1599 - that 'any leader might be thrown from power by assassination, eh?' But, still not funny.

Like Kate, I had mixed reactions to the interpretation. Some well-played, well-paced scenes; an intriguing Cassius; a Brutus I wished had more about him, and the battle scenes feeling better weighted, rather than just shoved on the end after the death. Hmm. Thanks, Kate!

This is heritage Shakespeare. It is how they used to produce Shakespeare in the first half of the 20th century before Peter Hall founded the RSC and changed forever (we thought) the way Shakespeare is produced in UK. One thing Hall did, starting with the Wars of the Roses, was to draw parallels – explicit and implicit – between Shakespeare’s history plays and present day politics. There is none of that here, it is just a historical pageant with little relevance to today, and actually with little relevance to Ancient Rome either.

There was a very good exhibition of the painter Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) at Leighton House earlier this year. He was a wildly popular Victorian painter who specialised in scenes of Ancient Rome. The Roman architecture in his paintings was accurate (and he was held to be the best painter of marble there has ever been) but if you look at his works now you can see the Romans themselves are just upper-middle-class Victorians in fancy dress. Despite this his works had an extraordinary influence and even today they define how we all visually think of Ancient Rome. In his day he did several stage designs (one for Coriolanus was in the exhibition) and several film production designers have explicitly drawn from his paintings – Ben Hur (1959), Carry On Cleo (1964), Gladiator (2000) being just a few.

This production design is very much in the same tradition – a fantasy Ancient Rome pandering to our preconceptions. The set is one of the RSC’s static monolithic efforts – RSC set design standards have really plummeted since (and because) they moved to a thrust stage in the main house. All the senators and Caesar wear identical (spotlessly clean) togas, sandals and (as appropriate) plastic armour. All the Various Citizens wear generic smocks. I think we are secure in saying that we don’t know what Ancient Rome looked like but it didn’t look like this. From mid-career Peter Hall took against this type of historically “accurate” design – his point would have been that dressing all the conspirators identically in togas gives us no information at all about their characters or relative status – his specific example was that if a character drank out of a goblet that told us nothing, but if he drank out of a cut glass whisky glass then that told us something about him, it was a cultural reference we recognised and helped to fill in his character. Here the director eliminates that possibility so all he is left with is the acting.

In general, and in keeping with the early 20th century vibe, the acting is static, loud and declamatory with expansive arm gestures and speeches being acted out almost in mime. The lack of movement is almost operatic. The opposite of realism and so quite distancing. I quite like Alex Waldmann but here he is miscast as Brutus – he is too lightweight and too keen to get a laugh. Other performances are quite good with the exception Andrew Woodall who delivers an extraordinarily camp turn as Caesar (on the whole Robert Stephens was right about the role – Caesar was the greatest soldier Rome had seen and should appear as such – for example he should be physically hard to kill).

The director Angus Jackson has delivered two disappointing and unimaginative productions in this season, and was also the season director. If they are grooming him to take over from Doran then he has flunked his audition badly unless (and here is the worry) Doran dictated how these plays should be directed (as we know he did for the Loves Labours/Much Ado pairing). Not sure where the RSC is going to be honest – productions like this look backwards rather than forwards.

Am very late to the party reading this thread and reminds me however much I think I 'get' a play most of it sails over my head and then someone on here explains just a small line that reveals something more than I realised. So thanks, it may take some time for you to explain the whole cannon but i'm liking what I get. Oh and Dr Brock i'll expect my Caesars to fight back now, you're right, that would make sense.

I am going to say perhaps it is just this job. He didn't look engaged when I saw it months ago though he seemed to be trying hard. Maybe just the right fit, not the right job for him, or who knows. 

But there's still world-leading UK Shakespeare - Robert Icke's Hamlet and Emma Rice's A Midsummer Night's Dream are two recent examples. In the 60s, the RSC and NT were the young innovators and now they're the solid oldtimers. You just have to look in the right places.

this is depressing,but i have to agree.

perhaps our majors have become too obsessed with agendas and politics to unleash work of real excitement.

the trend for amateur and community participation may be fitting for a culture where anyone can do anything but it,nontheless,does reduce the uniqueness of seeing a world leading theatre in action.It will continue and with the current directors a shared type of experience.What I am saying is-lets try to preserve excellence as well as participation.

The crowd scenes in both Caesar and Andronicus are lamentable and ,quite frankly,not reflective of the RSC stated aspirations.Yet the casting across the company is not strong right now and one senses that many do not want to enrich their career paths by coming to Stratford.

I agree about Icke's Hamlet and hope that other companies take bold steps in casting and directors.Think its odd that the front line directors do not go to Stratford.....Icke,Mitchell,quite like to see a Sally Cookson etc.....anyway one can only imagine but I dont think much will change now.I do find myself moving away from theatre as the agendas are too much for the profession and not really about the audience.

Another issue with Katie Mitchell at the RSC is that she declined to direct anything by Shakespeare other than a single small-scale Henry VI Part 2. Of course Howard Davies was there for decades with a similarly sparse Shakespeare record but ultimately they can’t afford to support directors who won’t direct Shakespeare (a few) and won’t direct in the Stratford main house (a larger group). They could do what the NT does and hijack star directors who have made their name elsewhere (Icke, Van Hove) but you get the impression Doran would be insecure about having high-status directors there - why hasn’t he invited any of the past ADs to return with a Shakespeare, or Rupert Goold ? Or Julie Tamor ? Or Deborah Warner ? You could all add names of top directors to the list I’m sure.

I've just seen the RSC's Twelfth Night and sadly its just as average as the Roman season. It only got chuckles from the audience except during Adrian Edmondson's yellow stocking scene.

It only gets into my top 10 Shakespeare productions this year because Adrian Edmondson out of the blue gives an award-winning performance in the final scene. Anyway, it was a choice between that and Julius Caesar.

Anyway, that is Christopher Luscombe's production. Where was the fun and lightheartedness that was in Loves Labours Lost and Much Ado About Nothing?

I could say the same for Angus Jackson. Only last year his Don Quixote was a silly and fun production to watch. My favourite play of 2016. His King Lear with Frank Langella barely had a weak link in the cast. And yet here he is "in charge" of this uninspiring Roman season.

Iqbal Kahn's Indian Much Ado About Nothing and Othello weren't perfect but I loved the attention he gave to these exotic settings. Antony and Cleopatra was the obvious play for him to direct and yet he was stuck with the same set used in this season. I barely felt like I was in Ancient Egypt.

And that set was such a hindrance at times in Blanche McIntyre's Titus Andronicus with actors having to clamber onto it to exit there. I haven't seen any outstanding productions from her but she's done better than this.

All these directors have shown creativity and vision in previous productions and it's almost as if this has been sucked out of them this year. I'd like to think the Roman season was just a one-off set back, but Christopher Luscombe's Twelfth Night doesn't inspire confidence for next year.