JULIUS CAESAR AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Some plays sink in slower than others. It is five hundred years since Shakespeare wrote his shortest play a tense, terse psychological profile of self delusion. It was on the money back then and as incisive a study in tyranny today .Get ye down to the Arts theatre tonight last chance to see the London Classic Theatre’s brilliant version of power imperilled, and revolutionaries on the rampage. As the blood-soaked assassins cry ‘ ‘Freedom’ as they sprint manically around the Capitol it is hard to forget the words of brave Girondist Madame Roland from the scaffold of the French Guillotine, ” Oh Liberty what crimes are committed in thy name!”
The versatile Omar Bynon as a rabble raising comic cobbler - see him too as a conspirator
Dickon Tyrell’s Caesar was a smooth classic politician. He visited the audience on his first stage exit with warm handshakes and a polished proprietorial ‘Welcome to Rome’. He oozes charisma. Essential for an actor ready to take on the most famous general /dictator/hero of all time. His pompous self- egrandisment was perfect for the role . He ignores his wife Calpurnia’s a poised and beautiful Amie Francis, pleas to beware the Ides of March with “ I am as constant as the Morning Star’ And just before his dramatic and horrific stabbing to death is still pronouncing , irony of ironies, on his irreplaceable unique superiority.
Cash Holland as Sinna
Against this the plotters, all one time allies of Julius Caesar have had quite enough. Charlotte Bate as Cassius, yes the one with the lean and hungry look, was superb. Instead of a creepy conspirator we got a passionate rationalist whose arguments up until the actual assassination were well reasoned whilst she displayed a wild and committed belief in yes, liberty and democracy. It was a strange reminder that men in the time of Shakespeare were more demonstrative, freer with emotional expression, given to tears of grief and groans of love . Men, especially Anglo Saxon men have lost this free play of feelings and today this is more like the behaviour we expect today from - women. Which makes Shakespearean men played by women more authentic . It is not long since a woman footballer was banned from the pitch. Now their performances appears to offer the game as more nuanced attractive spectacle . In the arts the same metamorphosis has deepened the creative of Shakespeare not obscured it.
Omar Bynon as Decius
Anna Critchlow as Brutus brought out his supercilious self absorption . Noble yes, but cool introverted and dogmatic. Good to see the costumes change to Russian style revolutionaries as the cabal of conspirators take over. Cash Holland, an actor to watch, is all over this production with multiple appearances from a beauteous dutiful wife to Murellus an ambiguous figure of doubtful allegiance. Her projection was perfect, as my companion remarked in the interval ‘ she has a lovely low voice - ‘an excellent thing in woman’ as Shakespeare himself remarked a few hundred years ago.
Charlotte Bate’s Cassius claims the stage,
A cast of eight took the play by storm. There was comedy at the beginning, horror in the middle and everything to think about at the end. After all we have been doing that for centuries already. As candidates all gather to declare their love for their leader but their determination to unseat him , what has changed in that time?
