ARTSMONDAY: 'Julius Caesar' an Ambiguous Success

“Julius Caesar” is a play that is often as much about the time it is staged as the period it depicts. Despite the assertion of co-directors Robert D. Salas ’08 and Winter Mead ’08 that the play’s language was the focus of the production, the version produced by Kimberly E. Gittleson ’08, who is also a Crimson magazine editor, made several gestures toward the present. But the modern elements of the show never coalesced into clear ideas, resulting in a well done but ultimately uninspiring version of Shakespeare’s classic.

The plot of the play, which ran at the Loeb Experimental Theatre through March 24, is well known: Fearing that Julius Caesar (Mead) may be crowned Emperor of Rome, a group of Roman citizens, led by Brutus (Jon E. Gentry ‘07) and Cassius (Alexander J. Berman ‘10), plan to assassinate him.

They do so, but Antony (Peter C. Shields ’09), Caesar’s right-hand man, shifts public opinion against Brutus and Cassius. The pair flees the city, fighting a losing battle against the new ruling Triumvirate outside Rome. Salas specially adapted Shakespeare’s script for the Loeb Ex production, keeping the story to a snappy two hours by dwelling on the events leading up to the assassination and speeding through those that follow.

Some of the changes in the script for the Loeb Ex production were necessary given the space and the cast: for example, Brutus had one servant instead of many. Some were a little more drastic. The adaptation eliminated one of the Triumvirate entirely, and cut the speech of another to a few lines. The result was that the play was more narrowly focused on Brutus and Cassius than it is in some versions, an interesting shift. But the plot would have been more compelling with a little less redundancy of scenes in the first half (in large part Shakespeare’s fault, to be fair) and a little more exposition in the second.

The great benefit of the production’s focus on the conspirators was that Gentry and Berman, who play Brutus and Cassius respectively, were the standouts of the cast. Gentry, who is always fantastic, played the stoic Brutus with the requisite gravity and intensity, but with enough emotion so that he wasn’t just a cipher.

Berman’s Cassius was the perfect foil to Brutus: energetic and passionate where Brutus was calm and considered. Berman seemed perpetually on the verge of attacking someone, making the character fiery and the play livelier. At one point Cassius and Brutus came to blows, proving that both wield a mean fencing sword.

Shields was also excellent. As Antony, he delivered the funeral oration—his big moment in what could otherwise be considered a Brutus and Cassius show—with fantastic emotion and more than a touch of the manipulation, making it obvious why the speech could shift public opinion so rapidly.

A modern military look dominated Salas’s set, which was painted tan with some green interspersed on the floor and chain-link fencing along the back. Characters sat on two piles of sandbags and dressed largely in camouflage fatigues, or, in the case of Caesar and Antony, dress uniforms.

The costumes (designed by Amanda C. Shanks ’08) as well as the set seemed to vaguely reference Middle East struggles, but nothing more overt underscored that imagery. What’s more, the characters’ use of swords as well as a single Roman column at the back of the set counteracted the contemporary feel. The column had the practical purpose of allowing stage entrances from behind a screen suspended from it, but its presence confused the setting.

Including elements from various periods is certainly a legitimate concept, but on a set so sparse, these aspects of the set seemed less like a collision of ages and more like stray pieces from a different production. While the set didn’t detract from the show, it was ultimately unclear what, if anything, it was trying to convey.

Another particularly noticeable element was the sound design: scene transitions were accompanied by lovely Spanish guitar pieces composed by Daniel Salas. Less lovely was the over-reliance on pre-recorded voices for crowds when having a few actors shout would have been just as effective. The famous “Beware the Ides of March” soothsayer was also a ghostly recorded voice in this production; accompanied by dimmed lights and a pause in the action, the effect was overly portentous.

“Julius Caesar” is a malleable play: It is adaptable to many themes, and Mead and Salas made the Loeb Ex version about the actions and eventual downfall of Brutus and Cassius. It seemed at times that it might have become a play about current events, or political truths, but the production never quite reached that point. It worked quite well, however, as a showcase for some great acting and for the language and story of the play itself—a feature that on its own is enough to recommend the show.

—Reviewer Elisabeth J. Bloomberg can be reached at bloomber@fas.harvard.edu.