JULIUS CAESAR. To 24 November.
Colchester.
JULIUS CAESAR
by William Shakespeare.
Mercury Theatre To 24 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 10 Nov 2.30pm 15 Nov 2pm 22 Nov 11am.
Audio-described 21 Nov.
BSL Signed 15 Nov 7.30pm.
Post-show discussion 14 Nov.
TICKETS: 01206 573948.
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 November.
Male world revealingly inhabited by women.
This all-female Julius Caesar benefits from single sex casting, more than the Mercury’s men-only Coriolanus. Take the testosterone out of the performances and Caesar’s innate power-play violence stands revealed.
Director Dee Evans deals stylistically with practical problems of swords and togas. Characters wear androgynous body-length clothing, the conspirators with green, Caesar and his followers red, emphasis. The contrast’s striking when Brutus and Cassius turn from their assassination plans to face Caesar’s party, entering across the stage in colours that might be those of a rival army.
Deaths by dagger or sword are neatly stylised, characters’ hands, fingers stretched out, seeming to slice into bodies.
More fundamentally, Evans reveals the play’s innate darkness. Black-hooded figures move along the huge wall the production shares with its predecessor. During the stormy, portent-laden night before the assassination these figures hang like detritus around barrels rolling in the wind.
As in Coriolanus, the crowd becomes a chanting, instinctive mob. After Caesar’s death, where crowd mood can influence events, they carry sticks. The angry beat of these replaces individual voices with irrational crowd-mentality. Their clacking gradually subdues as Mark Antony wins them over, before beating loudly at mention of Caesar’s will; demands to hear this read out come from the most rabid mob-member. The attack on Cinna the Poet becomes a stark example of unreasoning revenge in its quick-mounting violence.
Caesar’s body is dragged into the Forum on the blood-red cloth that originally covered his seat of power. His body’s subsequently raised aloft, joined by Cinna’s corpse, before the bloodstained bodybag count grows with those murdered anonymously in battle or as political revenge.
By taking the interval before the great Forum speeches, Evans points up how their spin begins the crowd manipulation that ends in war, giving unusual coherence to the later acts.
There are routine patches, and a few actors seem stretched by the verse. But not Shuna Snow’s authoritative Cassius, tight clothing contrasting her character with Christine Absalom’s generous-minded, flowingly-clad Brutus. Snow invests Cassius the political manipulator with a fury suggesting the wider discontent of an Iago. A fine performance in an intriguing production.
Julius Caesar: Miranda Bell.
Calphurnia/Metellus Cimber/Octavius Caesar: Gina Isaac.
Flavius/Trebonius/Lucius: Nadia Morgan.
Marullus/Decius Brutus/Caius Ligarius/Messala: Elizabeth Ingram (Hughes)
Marcus Brutus: Christine Absalom.
Caius Cassius/Clitus: Shuna Snow.
Casca/Titinius/Dardanius: Kate Copeland.
Cinna/Portia/Lepidus/Young Cato: Clare Humphrey.
Artemidorus/Volumnius: Natasha Rickman.
Strato/Musician: Nao Masuda.
Soothsayer/Popilius/Cicero/Varro/Pindarus: Charlie Morgan.
Mark Antony: Kelly Williams.
Director: Dee Evans.
Designer: Sara Perks.
Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt.
Sound: Marcus Christensen.
Composer/Musical Director: Ansuman Biswas.
Movement: Sue Lefton.
Fight director: Philip d’Orleans.
2007-11-19 08:23:05