Julius Caesar 2009


Clive Hayward as Cassius. (Photo: Graham Burke)

Director's Note  

12th February - 21st March 2009  

Julius Caesar is a personal tragedy, played out within the small group of aristocrats that dominated the Roman Republic almost two thousand years ago. To us it is the stuff of old school books on the one hand and Hollywood epics on the other. To Shakespeare and his contemporaries, while it was similarly ‘ancient’ history, the assassination of Caesar was an urgent, controversial narrative about characters they felt reached out to them over the centuries and about issues that provoked and troubled them. An English Republic – in the sense we would understand it now – would not become a serious possibility until forty years after Shakespeare wrote his play, but debate about alternative forms of government, about how the ‘common weal’ could best be promoted and secured, had become a vivid thread in the nation’s intellectual and political life. The future King James 1 acknowledged as much in two 1598 treatises in which he felt it necessary to argue the case for unwavering obedience to hereditary rulers, be they good or bad.
   Rome was key to this debate. The fount and treasury of civilised law and, together with Ancient Greece, the inspiration  - in their politics, philosophy, poetry and drama - for the new humanism that was sweeping Europe, Rome’s journey from the tyranny of Tarquin, through the 450 years of the Republic to the foundation of Imperial rule by Octavius, served as a complex template for the analysis of England’s own governance, and inspired speculation as to how it might be re-ordered when the ageing virgin Queen Elizabeth died.
   The Republic itself could serve as model, or as warning, depending on your point of view.  Likewise, the assassination of Caesar divided opinion.  Was he truly a tyrant in the making, or the victim of a manipulative slur generated by envy or private grievance? If the accusation were true, could his murder be justified, or would Rome pay an even higher price in the anarchy and mayhem that would inevitably follow? Politically, and perhaps morally, the same ambivalence can be found in the play. 
   What Shakespeare brings to the story - within a landscape that is more London than Rome, and more 1600 AD than 44 BC - is the intensity of the human experience of conceiving and committing a murder for ideological ends. Andrew Hilton 

Cast

Flavius & Lepidus Paul Brendan
Carpenter, Ligarius & Messala Peter Clifford
Murellus & Poet Chris Bianchi
Cobbler & Octavius Caesar Byron Mondahl
Julius Caesar Simon Armstrong
Calphurnia Catherine McKinnon
Mark Antony Alun Raglan
Soothsayer & Volumnius Jonathan Nibbs
Caska Alan Coveney
Cassius Clive Hayward
Brutus Leo Wringer
Cicero & Clitus Paul Nicholson
Cinna & Lucilius Dan Winter
Lucius Jim Hilton & Felix Lehane
Trebonius & Strato Tom Sherman
Decius Brutus & Titinius Paul Currier
Metellus Cimber & Pindarus Marc Geoffrey
Portia Dani McCallum
Caesar’s Servant Craig Fuller
Octavius’ Servant & Young Cato Sam Harris

Production

Director Andrew Hilton
Associate Director Dominic Power
Assistant Director Lars Gathe
Set & Costume Designer Harriet de Winton
Costume Supervisor Rosalind Marshall
Lighting Designer Tim Streader
Sound Designer & Composer Dan Jones
Fight Director Peter Clifford
Production Photographer Graham Burke

Production Manager Joanna Cuthbert
Stage Manager Jayne Byrom
Deputy Stage Manager Eleanor Dixon
Assistant Stage Manager Fiona Jane Coombe
Carpenter Martin Moyes
Scenic Painter Elaine Carr
Costume Maintenance Miri Birch
Wardrobe Assistant Sophie Borton
Costume Laundry Kim Winter

Simon Armstrong (Catherine McKinnon) by Graham Burke

Simon Armstrong as Caesar & Catherine McKinnon as Calphurnia. Photo: Graham Burke 

Reviews

The Times
23rd February  2009
* * * *
  What saps the power of this play is always the character of Brutus. Was there ever anyone so ready to tell people how noble he is, droning on and on about it until you want to pelt him with eggs? He is said to be a philosopher, and it’s easy to see that he should never have been allowed out of his library. Perhaps Shakespeare wants us to see this. It’s hard to tell. His Brutus makes all the wrong decisions, and crushes waverers by reminding them how noble he is. Everyone calls him noble, friends and enemies alike. It’s insufferable. Without Brutus’s smugly confident regard for his own wisdom Mark Antony would never have been granted the chance to sway the Roman mob and history would have taken a different turn. Perhaps Shakespeare wants us to believe that Fate always provides someone to upset plots to cut down a leader, but the effect is to turn Brutus’s accomplices into lay figures lacking wills of their own. 
  So if a production is to succeed it must indicate some quality we can respect in this man, and while Andrew Hilton’s direction is excellent in so many ways, it allows a wobble to enter in here. Leo Wringer has done fine work for Hilton in the past, and in the tension of his posture his Brutus certainly suggests a man unused to mingling with ordinary folk. But except during tender scenes with his exhausted servant he doesn’t convey what impels other men to love and venerate him.
  In other respects this production once again reveals Hilton’s genius for calling forth new vigour in the Shakespearean canon. His justly award-winning company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, is ten years old this month and celebrates this achievement by assembling a cast of 20, its largest yet, and an astonishing number for a company that must fund 80 per cent of its costs from box-office returns.
  A company strength has always been the lively playing in the smaller parts. The Soothsayer speaks no more than a dozen lines but Jonathan Nibbs uses them to create a figure of urgency and alarm. Octavian has not many more but is given a vivid indication of self-certainty by Byron Mondahl, playing him older than the “schoolboy” of his enemies’ mockery but with a cold assurance that augurs well for his reappearance in the Antony and Cleopatra that follows this production next month.
  Alan Coveney’s sneering Casca and Clive Hayward’s ever-anxious Cassius are striking performances, and there is an impressive, gravely smiling Caesar from Simon Armstrong. Harriet de Winton costumes the actors in the Jacobean doublets and sinister black hats that link the play to the plots of Guy Fawkes. This may not be an all-perfect production but it does come enjoyably close to it. Jeremy Kingston

The Guardian 
21st February 2009
* * * * 
  Fifty years after Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, a king lost his head in the English revolution. For those watching Shakespeare’s play at its Globe premiere in 1599, the issues of governance raised in the play would have been rumbling and urgent. How should a ruler rule? Should a potential tyrant be toppled? Do anarchy and chaos inevitably follow?
  Andrew Hilton’s revival, with its olive green and black Puritan-style costumes, sets the action firmly in an early 17th-century London of shadows and bloody acts. But there is something about its speed and leanness that makes this production seem very modern, a parable for our own interventionist age. Cassius’s drip-drip of discontent into Brutus’s ear is a steady flow of doubtful intelligence manipulated for his own ends.
  This is a racy, intelligent thriller shot through with a sardonic humour that constantly pricks at the stated ambitions of men and bursts the balloon of ideology. In this instance, the slaughter of Caesar comes with a scary, unnecessary violence so great he appears to lose his kidneys. That first bloody act leads to others, including the murder of the innocent Cinna, slaughtered by the baying rabble.
  As ever, the intimacy of this space works its alchemy, and Hilton celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory seasons in customary rigorous style with a production that is never flash yet still cuts a considerable dash. There are no big budgets or stars here, but, bar a couple of hiccups in minor roles, there is well-spoken verse and detailed performance from actors working as a real ensemble. Long may it continue. Lyn Gardner

The British Theatre Guide
  One of the achievements of this production of Julius Caesar is to make what can often seem a broken-backed play engage over the course of a full two-and-a-half hours. It is the finest thing I've seen by the company in some time ...
  SATTF director Andrew Hilton wisely opts to take the interval immediately after the assassination, providing a springboard into the second half of the play. He is also immeasurably helped by the intimacy of the Tobacco Factory venue and the virtual absence of props which enables the evening to race to its climax.
  The strength of the company lies in the ensemble work, rather than star names. Still, the production does not feel undercast. There is in particular excellent work from Clive Hayward as Cassius, strong support from Leo Wringer as Brutus, Alan Coveney as Casca, and a charismatic Alun Raglan as Mark Antony who needs, however, to rein back the 'sturm' at times.
  Hilton and designer Harriet de Winton opt to locate the play in the 17th century at the time of the English Civil War, when the debate about how the country ought to be governed, and by whom, and by what authority, was at its height. Time and again Hilton, a scrupulous reader of the text, brings new insights. Thus when Leo Wringer, who played Othello in last year's season, is brought into the conspiracy by a trick, a series of planted letters by Cassius, one is reminded of Othello, whose iron self-belief is built on his sense of personal honour, the undermining of which is to prove the cause of his self-destruction ...
   Finally, credit should also be paid to sound designer and composer Dan Jones whose work greatly augments the production, from the roars of the crowd to the chirp of the cicadas which accompany talk at the rebels' camp.
  The production didn't convince me that the play is a great one but it's the best argument I've seen for it to date. Comparison with the RSC production, to be staged later this year with their infinitely greater resources, will be fascinating. Pete Wood