Julius Caesar (RSC)

By Robert Iles - 3rd Dec 2004

A note in the programme tells us that director David Farr has written an episode of the BBC spy series Spooks, and at times during this production it feels as if he is trying out a few ideas in preparation.

This is a determinedly modern rendering of Shakespeare’s examination of democracy and the role of individual power, set in a sort of post industrial landscape – all girders and shiny perspex in Ti Green’s robust design – that could be any emerging democracy from Chechnya to Baghdad.

In the first half Farr’s expressionistic Brecht meets Guy Richie style works for much of the time. The text is conveyed with startling clarity thanks in part to the authoritative dignity of Christopher Saul’s Caesar and the down to earth, bloke-next-door approach of the impressively human Garry Oliver as Mark Antony.

But after a while the self-conscious tricksiness of the direction begins to irritate. The conspirators dowse themselves in water from a stainless steel bucket and echo the device later when water is replaced with Caesar’s blood – Caesar himself having smeared himself disconcertingly with his own blood mid assassination; video cameras project images onto sheets; hand held triple spotlights illuminate actors; conspirators momentarily halt mid stride in a device beloved of Spooks-like dramas; and the whole piece is underscored with weird abstract sound reminiscent of early Doctor Who.

When it works it’s great, but unfortunately it simply doesn’t work for enough of the time. In the second act the Farr’s direction becomes more Brechtian and less sustainable – there’s even a weird Berliner Cabaret style song delivered by the recently murdered Cinna the Poet that seems almost wilfully out of place.

Shakespeare’s mob scenes are always problematic and there is more than a whiff of the school gymnasium here as the crowd harangue while dangling from the girders.

And the individual performances are more uneven than I can ever remember from the RSC, ranging across the spectrum of vocal and physical styles. As a result I couldn’t buy into the relationship between Zubin Varla’s Brutus and the Cassius of Adrian Schiller. As for Laurence Mitchell’s weakly limp Octavius, I just can’t imagine what he and the director thought they were playing at.

Paul Fowler