With the rise of populist movements across the world and a crisis in representative democracy, it’s no surprise that Shakespeare’s 400-year-old play should be back in fashion. It has even made the front pages. Oskar Eustis’s Shakespeare in the Park production in New York, featuring a Caesar looking very much like Donald Trump, replete with blond comb-over, has drawn outraged criticism from those under the misapprehension that Julius Caesar is a play that advocates violence. On the contrary, as Simon Dormandy’s intelligent staging proves, it’s a lesson in how democracy is never defended by bloodshed; how violence only breeds havoc and carnage.
Dormandy’s production, relocated to contemporary Rome, is not going to grab the headlines, even if Julian Glover’s ruddy-faced Caesar does have a touch of Trump about him. But this collaboration between Bristol Old Vic and its theatre school, in which graduating students play all the roles apart from Caesar, Calpurnia (Lynn Farleigh) and the Soothsayer (John Hartoch), scores by suggesting intergenerational conflict as a reason why the youthful conspirators take action against the ageing ruler. A pity then, that this is undercut by a naff opening scene of placard-wielding youngsters expressing undying support for Caesar.
Yet the production does underline the perils of persuasive rhetoric. Nowhere more so than in Mark Antony’s funeral oration, brilliantly delivered by Ross O’Donnellan, who suggests that there was always a crafty manipulator beneath the blunt persona of the man who might have been dismissed as a bit of a chump.
There is good work, too, from Freddie Bowerman as Brutus, who resembles a decent school prefect reluctantly pushed into action by the hero worship of Cassius (Edward Stone) and his other earnest young admirers. There is tenderness in Brutus’s relationship with the doomed Portia (Sarah Livingstone) and the deliciously over-enthusiastic and loyal Lucia (Alice Kerrigan).
The most chilling performance is a gender-reversed Octavia, played with breathtaking ruthlessness by Rosy McEwan, which hints of the imperial dictatorship to come. As the body count rises, it’s the corpse of democracy that tops the pile.
- At Bristol Old Vic until 1 July. Box office: 0117-987 7877.
