JULIUS CAESAR. To 18 October.
Edinburgh
JULIUS CAESAR
by William Shakespeare
Royal Lyceum Theatre To 18 October 2003
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 1,4,8,11 October 2.30pm
Audio-described 2 October, 4 October 2.30pm
4 October 12.30pm Touch tour
BSL Signed 7 October
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 0131 248 4848
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 September
A good start to a decent beginning for a new regime.
The corridor - or atrium - of power where the first production of Mark Thomson's own peaceful regime change is set, is a vast, tilting glass wall. Likely as not, it's the imposing headquarters of some multinational financial corporation - an apt modern equivalent for the Romans' political empire.
It's immediately clear this is no taken-as-read account of the play. Detail emerges in the tradesmen's best-suited pro-Caesar rally clothes, and in the distinct peronality of the two senators who rebuke them, Steven Cartwright's placatory Flavius contrasted against the denunciatory harshness of Gavin Kean's Marullus.
Kean turns up later in another finely detailed contrast, his Octavius Caesar breaking into immediate conflict with Mark Antony, his political ally and fellow revenger for Caesar's death.
Director Mark Thomson has a keen eye for the political situation - be it in the senate or the boardroom. The power interplay is clear as Cassius gestures to fellow-conspirators not to argue with Brutus, whom he wants on Board, in an early sign of the conflicts and reconciliatrions which follow fatally for them both.
And the immediate aftermath of Caesar's killing is handled in fine detail, Thomson detecting an element of too much protesting their triumph in the script. There's a downbeat air to the grouping, one conspirator vomiting, a couple sitting near-slumped in chairs amid the extravagant claims of murder as cutting off years of fearing death, and the killing being acted out in societies yet unborn.
Phil McKee's Antony comes into his own in the famous funeral speech, where he handles the crowd with unforced manipulative detail. His opening assertions about the conspirators' honesty are given emphasis as if he knows they might be listening ready to stop him.
Glily Gilchrist's Brutus looks behind him as Kenneth Bryans' authoritative Cassius unfolds the conspiracy - if a door's open and the wrong person passing, Brutus seems to realise, the whole game's up. Gilchrist has an imposing presence but over-hurries his speech, losing the sense of his key role, underplaying his internal debate over the conspiracy and leaving Antony's (rather awkwardly staged) final eulogy for him unexplained.
There are less developed moments: apart from the awkward moments when Kern Falconer's imposing, if not obviously military, Caesar reveals his wife's infertility in public, the domestic relations remain cool - almost as if they didn't matter much. The Brutus/Portia marriage, especially, seems a cool affair, at odds with the words and Portia's reported fate.
And the final sequence, moving towards the two sides' showdown, is ill-defined. Cassius' and Brutus' deaths carry little significance, becoming mere events in a chronicle.
Marshalling a large-scale play as opener for a new management is a major task; whatever the shortcomings there's more than enough here to point optimistically to the Lyceum's future as being in safe hands.
Brutus: Gilly Gilchrist
Cassius: Kenneth Bryans
Antony: Phil McKee
Julius Caesar: Kern Falconer
Marullus/Trebonius/Octavius: Gavin Kean
Flavius/Artemidorus/Soldier: Douglas Russell
Carpenter/Metellus Cimber/Strato: Steven Cartwright
Cobbler/Ligarius: Chris Young
Decius Brutus/Lucilius: Ian Grieve
Lucius/Young Cato: Tom Freeman
Casca/Lepidus/Messala: Malcolm Shields
Soothsayer/Soldier/Poet: Allan Sharpe
Cinna/Volumnius: Billy McElhaney
Cicero/Cinns the Poet/Pindarus: James Bryce
Portia: Meg Fraser
Caphurnia: Isabella Jarrett
Director: Marl Thomson
Designer: Robert Innes Hopkins
Lighting: Simon Mills
Movement: Malcolm Shields
Assistant director: Kate Nelson
2003-09-28 15:57:48