Thelma and Julius
Monday, April 25, 2005
I managed to snag myself a seat for the new Julius Caesar at the Barbican for last Tuesday. Best seat in the house, midway back from the stage right in the middle of the stalls. Seat M25, if you must know. Of course, I managed to be one of the last to take my seat, which meant a long, disruptive walk from the aisle, causing legs to be shifted and bags to be lifted.
I sat next to Thelma, an elderly woman who lived in a flat in the Barbican. She was happy to tell me it would only take her three minutes to get home. I got home at 1am: it was a long play, I got out at 11.20 and had a long wait at Victoria for a train south.
And the play? Unbalanced, I would say. It was split into two 'halves', the first lasting two hours, the second only one hour. If you're going to have an intermission then it's hard to do it any other way: the assassination makes an obvious break point. The problem, then, is how to continue the momentum into the second part. When everything leads up to the murder on the Capitol steps, there is a natural sense that a conclusion has been reached when the last knife enters Caesar and he lies dead: a fatal falling sickness.
So part of the problem lies with the structure of the play itself. Quite frankly, the war that follows the assassination is of little interest: Octavius Caesar is a cipher, Marc Antony is a completely different character from the lightweight of the first part and you get the sense he wants to get this over with so he can go off to Egypt and meet Cleopatra. Casca - one of the more interesting conspirators - disappears completely in the second part and we spend an inordinate amount of time watching Cassius and Brutus act like executives of a failing corporation.
This was a modern-dress production that avoided forcing modern parallels on the audience. It was more a case of 'this is how something like this would happen now' rather than 'look what signifcance this has for us now'. This contributed to the power of the whole of that first part and was successful in making the final moments full of tension, however well known the results of the conspiracy are. The one bum note for me was struck by the first appearance of Marc Antony (Fiennes) in vest and slacks as some sort of pop star/athlete hero.
Unfortunately, the second half had bum notes aplenty, most occasioned by some dreadful acting by the men playing Messala and Octavius.
Final verdict? Glad I saw it. The play still has some of the best of Shakespeare's lines but there is always the problem of who is the main character and how to make the final section of the play match the tension and interest of the first. I think Thelma would agree with me when I say that buttocks start getting a lot number, however well padded the seat - in both senses - during the latter part of the play. Still, a promising writer and I think I'll look out for more of his stuff in the future.
It was Thelma who told me, incidentally, that a new Pope had been elected. This was in the interval (that she told me - not that they elected the Pope). At first she said his name was Benedictine XVI. I suggested that alcoholic drinks were not usually taken as the name of the pontiff and she corrected herself. I guess it's a toss up between alcohol and eggs. The eggs won. I'm not even going to start in on the choice and what it means for catholic women, gays, or starving children. Let's just say that perhaps the resonances of Julius Caesar were not so remote after all.
I sat next to Thelma, an elderly woman who lived in a flat in the Barbican. She was happy to tell me it would only take her three minutes to get home. I got home at 1am: it was a long play, I got out at 11.20 and had a long wait at Victoria for a train south.
And the play? Unbalanced, I would say. It was split into two 'halves', the first lasting two hours, the second only one hour. If you're going to have an intermission then it's hard to do it any other way: the assassination makes an obvious break point. The problem, then, is how to continue the momentum into the second part. When everything leads up to the murder on the Capitol steps, there is a natural sense that a conclusion has been reached when the last knife enters Caesar and he lies dead: a fatal falling sickness.
So part of the problem lies with the structure of the play itself. Quite frankly, the war that follows the assassination is of little interest: Octavius Caesar is a cipher, Marc Antony is a completely different character from the lightweight of the first part and you get the sense he wants to get this over with so he can go off to Egypt and meet Cleopatra. Casca - one of the more interesting conspirators - disappears completely in the second part and we spend an inordinate amount of time watching Cassius and Brutus act like executives of a failing corporation.
This was a modern-dress production that avoided forcing modern parallels on the audience. It was more a case of 'this is how something like this would happen now' rather than 'look what signifcance this has for us now'. This contributed to the power of the whole of that first part and was successful in making the final moments full of tension, however well known the results of the conspiracy are. The one bum note for me was struck by the first appearance of Marc Antony (Fiennes) in vest and slacks as some sort of pop star/athlete hero.
Unfortunately, the second half had bum notes aplenty, most occasioned by some dreadful acting by the men playing Messala and Octavius.
Final verdict? Glad I saw it. The play still has some of the best of Shakespeare's lines but there is always the problem of who is the main character and how to make the final section of the play match the tension and interest of the first. I think Thelma would agree with me when I say that buttocks start getting a lot number, however well padded the seat - in both senses - during the latter part of the play. Still, a promising writer and I think I'll look out for more of his stuff in the future.
It was Thelma who told me, incidentally, that a new Pope had been elected. This was in the interval (that she told me - not that they elected the Pope). At first she said his name was Benedictine XVI. I suggested that alcoholic drinks were not usually taken as the name of the pontiff and she corrected herself. I guess it's a toss up between alcohol and eggs. The eggs won. I'm not even going to start in on the choice and what it means for catholic women, gays, or starving children. Let's just say that perhaps the resonances of Julius Caesar were not so remote after all.
