Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, adapted by Peter Evans
and Kate Mulvaney for touring by Bell Shakespeare. Canberra Theatre
Centre, The Playhouse, August 2-13, 2011.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
2 August
Shakespeare is as constant as the Northern Star, and this production proves it.
Working
in generic modern dress, Peter Evans directs this neatly trimmed
adaptation so that we see, by implication, the effects not so much of
the non-violent Julia Gillard removal of Kevin Rudd (despite the usual
claims of political stabbing-in-the-back) but more closely what the
effects of Tony Abbott and the Barnaby Joyce Tea Party are likely to be.
The question for me about Julius Caesar
has always been what to do with the second half. Up to the murder and
Antony’s ears speech there’s no problem with dramatic tension – in fact,
up to Cinna’s mistaken slaughter by the maddened crowd. But armies
wandering around Philippi – all a bit ho-hum.
But not
in this production. The touring company has grown from Bell
Shakespeare’s education component. With only ten actors to do all the
parts and everything else from set manoeuvering to an amazing scaffold
construction, the old theatrical dictum that constraints lead to
discipline is played out before our very eyes. I trust they had the
correct rigger’s tickets!
They certainly had the right stylistic ticket. Combining acting the text with fully developed Stanislavski intentions with a choreographed design in movement, set within a Brechtian conception to alienate us from sentimental emotion was exactly right for this play.
Actors
came on stage, then signalled the moment that they walked into the
acting space, and out again. So simple – but so effective. Actors
could switch roles when they spoke through a standing microphone; or
could make part of a private conversation suddenly public.
The
result was a close-knit ensemble of performers each equally playing
their parts in a complex jigsaw puzzle. Placing the interval at
precisely the halfway point, freezing the action as the first murderous
blows were happening, gave us the motivation to return after champagne
and coffee to find out how everything would fit together after this.
And
what an ending. “Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do
run upon it …. Caesar, now be still: I kill’d not thee with half so
good a will.” Fade to black. None of Shakespeare’s “Who is this man”
etc etc. We don’t need to see Brutus fall. We know what he will do and
our imaginations fill in the blank, in silence. This is real theatre,
leaving the audience to applaud in a peculiarly muted kind of way, even
through two curtain calls. There is a humility here, on the part of the
performers and flowing over the audience, in recognising what
Shakespeare has done.
He has shown us the inevitable
unintended consequences of extreme destructive political action. In
Shakespeare’s day, Anthony Burgess suggests, the 1599 banning – indeed
the burning “in good Nazi style” – of books about English history gave
Will good reason to turn to more ancient times for a cautionary tale.
Then ironically, only 23 years after his death, republicans murdered a
king in England. They did things in reverse, having the civil war
first, then executing the king, with Oliver Cromwell the “Lord
Protector” in Parliament until he died in 1658. The monarchy was
restored (and Cromwell’s body was dug up, hung in chains and beheaded) –
and it must be said in the following century a compromise was reached
to begin the establishment of today’s limited monarchy.
As I write, I am reading Jack Waterford in today’s Canberra Times
(The Tony Abbott Tea Party, August 3, 2011 p.11). Of the US Tea Party,
he writes “For this anti-party, the mission is not seeking the best
possible outcome in the circumstances, but resistance and purity….For
Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott must seem much the same. As she complains,
he simply won’t accept the verdict of the umpire – the electorate – last
year. He acts as if he was cheated from his rightful place at the head
of government…. Like the Tea Party his campaigning style has been
focused on the extremes and on massive oversimplification.”
Waterford
concludes, though, that if Gillard can get the carbon tax up and
running, as she has the power to do with a majority in both houses,
“There’s a very good chance that this would expose Abbott’s hollowness,
his opportunism, and even some of the extremism of his remarks. Tea
Parties, as with their American predecessor Know-Nothing Parties, never
win." http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/waterford-the-tony-abbott-tea-party/2246566.aspx
Just
as Cassius and even the honest patriot Brutus could never win. And
just consider the parlous state the Roman polity ended up in, as Antony
worked to make Octavius become the emperor Augustus. What damage will
the Tea Parties inflict on us all?
So, in my view, Shakespeare’s star still shines, lighting up our understanding, and I thank Bell Shakespeare for it.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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