Shakespeare’s political thriller, one of the best ever written, instantly accessible, has always been popular. In the last two years alone I have seen Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production at the Donmar, which was set in a prison, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s all-male Italian film, also set in a prison, and Gregory Doran’s all-black production for the RSC set in modern Africa. So long as there are dictators, bloody coups, rampaging hordes and wars, the play will always be topical. The only trouble is that once the murder and the rousing scenes in the forum are over, the rest of the play, unless it is exceptionally well acted, can be an awful anti-climax.
At least 60 senators were involved in the assassination of Caesar. According to the historian Suetonius there were 23 dagger thrusts. The conspirators like to think of themselves as purgers, not murderers, liberators not butchers. “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” they cry after the assassination. How ironic! Tyranny is not dead. Rome will soon be ruled by Tiberius, Caligula and Nero.
The fickle crowd plays a key role. Looking at the paintings of Camuccini (1829), Piloty (1865) and Gerome (1867) and at illustrations and photographs of the stage productions of Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1881), Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1898), Granville-Barker (1911), Stanley Bell (1920), Max Reinhardt (1929) and Peter Stein (1992), with their enormous crowd scenes, I feel I have never seen the play done full justice.
One of the advantages the Globe Theatre has over other theatres is that they have a ready-made crowd in the groundlings who stand in the courtyard directly in front of the stage. (NB. It still only costs £5 to stand; and standing at the Globe is a theatrical experience like no other.)
Audiences at the Globe react in a different way. They are quicker to laugh. Anthony Howell (who is playing Cassius) must have been surprised that Cassius’s announcement that it was his birthday should get such a big laugh. Similarly, did Luke Thompson (who is playing Marc Antony) expect such a censorious roar of laughter when Antony tells the crowd he is no orator and incapable of stirring anybody to mutiny?
On the 21 September 1599, Thomas Platter, a Swiss physician from Basle, saw a production of Julius Caesar at the newly opened Globe Theatre and noted it was well performed, that there were 15 actors and that there was a dance at the end. 414 years later the dancing curtain-call is still one of the Globe’s most popular features.
In Shakespeare’s day the actors would have been expected to play more than one role in any one play. An interesting doubling in Dominic Dromgoole’s production is to have the actor who plays Caesar (George Irving) also play Strato, the soldier who holds Brutus’s sword so that Brutus (Tom McKay) can run upon it and commit suicide. It gives Brutus’s final words, “Caesar now be still; /I kill’d not thee with half so good will,” an additional uncanny resonance.