“Julius Caesar”, Guildford Shakespeare Company
Jeremy Malies
20 February 2017
Traipsing up Guildford High Street to see Julius Caesar at Holy Trinity Church I was tempted to think of Carrie’s verdict on the play in the musical Carousel. “All of them were dressed in night gowns and it made me sleepy.” Far from being soporific, this production directed by Gemma Fairlie proves electrifying and immersive in the truest sense. The audience is besieged immediately by political activists brandishing placards and demanding our factional loyalty. Lobbyists scurry out of side chapels asking for pledges (and even a Mexican wave) in a divided Rome.
Photo credit: Steve Porter.
The all-female version of the play at the Donmar Warehouse with the brilliant framing device of setting the piece in a women’s prison continues to cast a long shadow. I never thought I would see a better female (or male) Brutus than Dame Harriet Walter but Johanne Murdock runs her close. Through subtle inflection and gesture, Murdock proves adept at showing her character’s unease as Caesar’s excesses.
In a year of elections across Europe that may see far-right parties poll well or even take power, and with the most acrimonious American campaign ever, there is something deeply troubling about a play whose message can be interpreted as broadly sympathetic to uber-patriotism and assassination. Fairlie is alive to all of this and it’s a springboard of this treatment. As Caesar and Calpurnia, Noel White and Jessica Guise are convincingly telegenic as indeed they would need to be in this political coliseum. They also appear to have won over every section of the media.
There are some brilliant cameos, notably the company’s finest comedienne Sarah Gobran playing the soothsayer as a demented bag lady. Against a political backdrop where image is everything, the company might have been tempted to overplay its visual hand. There are monitors and banners aplenty in the background but Fairlie works effectively with designers on inspired details such as stencilled placards in the style of the iconic Obama ‘Hope’ poster. One cavil: as with company’s recent The Winter’s Tale, I found the odd variant of traverse staging with two raised areas a trifle clunky and it certainly brought speed of group movement down a gear.
In addition to Brutus, many of the other male characters from Shakespeare’s original are played by women (and as women) with a result that the general atmosphere of ambition and imminent betrayal is heightened. At a time when a wounded Hillary Clinton toys with running for mayor of New York and Sarah Palin is considering a presidential run, this outstanding Julius Caesar is very much a version for our times. If the production just opening at the RSC poses half as many astute political questions it will be counted a success. The Guildford Shakespeare Company has added to its considerable reputation.
