Julius Caesar (22 page)

Taken to another level of experience,

Peter Hall’s 1995 production was not well received but was particularly noted for the fact that

The stage became a nightmarish place of paranoia and disorder, in which an uncanny atmosphere foreboded the imminent threat of physical violence:

In Edward Hall’s production in 2000, the removal of Caesar was equated with the removal of Rome’s heart and the slow death of the body politic:

In this production the formation of a uniformed and well-organized militia made up from Caesar’s entourage took the place of the traditional mob. At Antony’s oration they infiltrated the audience, shouting inflammatory remarks as Tom Mannion’s manipulative Antony whipped them up into a frenzy of hate, ready to exact his revenge. Many critics decried the fact that an essential element of the play was missing by the omission of the ordinary Roman plebeians. Indeed, there does not appear to be a production of
Julius Caesar
in which the handling of the mob has been universally praised:

This is all very well in theory but in practice these options, tried in their various forms, have failed to impress: large crowds of extras
have led to excessive “rhubarbing,” and when played by amateur actors, have not provided the emotional response required; the mob have been dispensed with altogether and replaced by sound systems offstage; and the audience itself has been forced into that uncomfortable role, unsure of the levels of participation expected.

That ordinary citizens should be the ones who are manipulated into acts of extreme violence and civil dissent is an element of horror essential to the play. Violence leads to more violence, and Antony, possessed by the tyrannical spirit of Caesar, utters one of the most chilling speeches in Shakespeare’s canon:

 … the chilling incantation of any extremist given the motive and the opportunity to mobilize ordinary people with petty hatreds and self-serving motives into violent expression.

Edward Hall
, son of the RSC’s founder Sir Peter Hall, was born in 1967 and trained at Leeds University and the Mountview Theatre School before cutting his teeth at the Watermill Theatre in the 1990s. His first Shakespearean success was a production of
Othello
in 1995, though he used the experience as inspiration to found Propeller, an all-male theater company with whom he directed
The Comedy of Errors
and
Henry V
, which ran together in repertory during the 1997–98 season, and
Twelfth Night
in 1999, all at the Watermill. In 1998 he made his directorial debut with the RSC on a production of
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
, and would go on to work again with the company on
Henry V
in 2000–01 and, in the 2001–02 season, the production of
Julius Caesar
which he will be discussing here. In
between
Henry
and
Caesar
that year, Hall returned to the Watermill to direct
Rose Rage
, his (in)famous and celebrated abattoir-set adaptation of the
Henry VI
trilogy. He left the RSC for good in 2002 and has continued to work with Propeller on such productions as
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in 2003 and
Twelfth Night
and
The Taming of the Shrew
in 2007. He became artistic director of Hampstead Theatre in 2010.

David Farr
is a writer and director, and has had an extraordinarily prolific career for such a young talent. He was artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London, from 1995 to 1998, moving on to the position of joint artistic director of Bristol Old Vic from 2002 to 2005. He became artistic director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in 2005, where his productions included
Water, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Birthday Party, The Magic Carpet, Ramayana, The Odyssey
, and a new version of Kafka’s
Metamorphosis
. As a playwright, his work includes
The Nativity, Elton John
’s
Glasses
, and
Crime and Punishment in Dalston
. David joined the RSC as an associate director in 2009, since which time he has directed Greg Hicks as Leontes in
The Win
ter’s
Tale
(2009) and as the title role in
King Lear
(2010), though his first work with the company came in between his tenures at the Gate and the Old Vic, writing
Night of the Soul
for the company, which was produced at the Pit Theatre in 2001. He returned to direct an award-winning production of
Coriolanus
(also starring Greg Hicks) in 2002, and a boldly modernist production of
Julius Caesar
at the Swan Theatre in 2004, which David revived in his first season at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Lucy Bailey
started her directorial career in experimental theater and moved on to work in opera before returning to theater in the mid-1990s. She continued her musical affiliations, however, founding the Gogmagogs in 1995 with violinist Nell Catchpole, known for their exciting hybrid performances combining virtuoso string playing and experimental physical theater. Her breakthrough 1999 production of Tennessee Williams’s
Baby Doll
in Birmingham found critical acclaim, and transferred to the National and the West End. Other directorial credits include
Lady from the Far Sea
for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre,
Glass Eels
and
Comfort Me with Apples
for Hampstead Theatre,
and
Don’t Look Now
for the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield and the Lyric Hammersmith. Her first major work with Shakespeare came in 2006 in her production of
Titus Andronicus
at Shakespeare’s Globe, followed by productions of
Timon of Athens
in 2008, and
Macbeth
in 2010. Her 2009–10 production of
Julius Caesar
for the RSC marked her directorial debut with the company.

Why is the play called
Julius Caesar
when he dies halfway through the play?

Hall:
I suppose he would have had a lot of trouble on his hands trying to call it
Brutus, Cassius
, or
Antony
, because they are all pretty big parts and all three actors would probably want billing! I think because Julius Caesar was the center of that universe and the play is about whether or not the conspirators should topple it. He is a huge figure, and one I think Shakespeare was fascinated by. I think he was fascinated by all the lives of Plutarch, and particularly Julius Caesar. My production started with the triumph and I think that and the title help to show that this man is as close to a king, an emperor, even a god, as somebody could get to within a republic.

You have to remember that the Elizabethan audience did not live in a republic; Shakespeare is writing a play about a completely different political system and in many respects is exploring a theme, which he carried on to explore in
Macbeth:
the divine right of kings. When is it your duty to stand up and rebel against order and authority? It’s a constant debate of our time. If 300,000 people march in the street against the war in Iraq and Tony Blair ignores them, what else do we do? Shakespeare is exploring that idea but set in a period removed from the one in which he was living to avoid any danger involved in depicting the overthrow of a ruler; famously, the deposition scene was cut from
Richard II
, and then performed at the Globe on the eve of Essex’s revolt against Elizabeth I. Any stories on stage that depicted a ruler having their authority challenged were very difficult to get past the censor.
Julius Caesar
gave Shakespeare a great canvas to paint on where he could explore these issues fully. He touched on these themes lightly in
Macbeth
, where he couldn’t quite be as explicit as I think he wanted to be because he was writing for James I,
a monarch who believed absolutely in the divine right of the king. So I think he called this Roman play
Julius Caesar
to make it absolutely clear that this was the story that he was exploring, and that it had no bearing on his present political or social circumstances: it was to take the heat off.

Farr:
The play is fundamentally about what happens when you remove a king, or what happens when you remove a man of power who tries to reach too far, so the shadow of him hangs over the whole political system afterward. Although I suppose Brutus is technically the lead character, he is in no sense in the same way that Hamlet or King Lear is. The play examines the whole political structure and the effect that the death of the king has, so that is probably the reason for the title. For me the play is a wonderful, modern, pertinent examination of the tendency for a leader to try and push just a bit too far, in terms of their status within a society. That could be Elizabeth I or Vladimir Putin or Berlusconi in the modern world; we see it happen again and again and again. I remember when I directed it we discussed a lot the way in which modern leaders pass various laws: immunity from prosecution is a good example, which Putin and Berlusconi both passed, or whether it be certain presidential decrees, like George W. Bush’s creation of a particular department answerable only to him in order that he could bypass certain areas of the Pentagon. There are many wonderful modern examples of what Caesar has done in claiming his crown.

Bailey:
It’s clear when you watch the play that the greatest man on that stage is Julius Caesar. Once he has been assassinated it feels as if all the rest are pygmies compared to him. He dominates the first half of the play, as the charismatic, verging on despotic, leader, and after he has been killed he returns to haunt it. I felt that the unifying element to the play was Julius Caesar—far from leaving the play, as soon as he is killed, his spirit lives on—no one stops talking about him. He returns in the second half to haunt Brutus, and in our production he appears at the very end as the revenging ghost stalking the battlefield, taking Brutus with him. One of the central questions that preoccupied Shakespeare and his contemporary audience was the nature of monarchy—at what point does monarchy become
tyranny? Is it possible to rule without resorting to violence and suppression? Is assassination ever justified and does it produce change for the better?
Julius Caesar
reads like a political thriller, all the action of the first half is the tense lead-up to the assassination, and then the second half is the bloody aftermath. One man’s blood becomes a sea of blood.