Julius Caesar @ The Bridge Theatre
March 4, 2018
On February 14th 2018, two weeks after the new Bridge Theatre’s Julius Caesar opened, seventeen people were killed at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. As part of the international outcry against gun ownership and violence that followed, numerous visceral, devastating accounts of the survivors’ experience of the attack circulated, along with graphic accounts of …
Julius Caesar (Donmar/Illuminations) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
July 14, 2017
I missed all performances of Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare Trilogy when they originally played at the Donmar and, latterly, King’s Cross, so I was thrilled to hear that they would be coming to cinemas. The suddenness of Julius Caesar’s appearance, and the relative lack of marketing, were hugely disappointing, however. Whereas NT Live and Live from …
Julius Caesar (Sheffield Theatres) @ The Crucible
June 1, 2017
Julius Caesar is having a moment. The RSC are doing it in togas in Stratford; the Donmar’s celebrated all-female production is coming to cinemas in the summer; and Nicholas Hytner is making it his first Shakespeare at the new Bridge Theatre in the new year. It’s also Robert Hastie’s choice for an inaugural production, this …
Second view: Roman Tragedies (Toneelgroep Amsterdam) @ The Barbican
March 20, 2017
I last saw Roman Tragedies eight years ago, when I was a teeny and energetic PhD student for whom theatrical marathons were par for the course. The production was, at the time, one of the biggest influences on my understanding of theatre; it remains on my mental list of my top five Shakespeare productions, and …
Caesar Must Die (dir. Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani)
April 21, 2013
Italy’s official nomination for the 2013 Best Foreign Language Oscar is an extremely odd beast. Ostensibly a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a group of Italian prisoners putting on a production of Julius Caesar, the film is framed by the climax of the real production, as Salvatore Striano’s Brutus seeks a willing hand on whose sword to …
Julius Caesar (RSC) on DVD
January 27, 2013
The acclaimed Julius Caesar directed by Gregory Doran for the RSC has already been discussed on this blog, but now, happily, the production has been released on DVD. Julius Caesar represents the exciting next phase in the RSC’s work with Illuminations, the production company that has already brought Greg’s Macbeth and Hamlet to DVD. For this …
Julius Caesar (RSC/Illuminations) @ BBC4
June 25, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01k7lv5/Julius_Caesar/ I’ve not yet had a chance to see the RSC’s new production of Julius Caesar, directed by Gregory Doran and currently playing in Stratford. The concept behind the production is fascinating, if not without its problems – an all-black British cast, performing the play as set in an unnamed modern …
Me and Orson Welles
June 22, 2010
This film comes as something of a holiday having recently written a performance history of Julius Caesar for the RSC Shakespeare single edition. Telling the story of Orson Welles’s seminal production of the play at New York’s Mercury Theatre in 1937 from the point of view of the actor playing Lucius, it’s a lovely slice …
Roman Tragedies (Toneelgroep Amsterdam) @ The Barbican
November 21, 2009
Writing about web page http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=9488 A six hour version of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra stitched together. With no interval. In promenade. In Dutch with surtitles. It’s been a while since I’ve subjected myself to a Shakespearean endurance test (The Histories), and this was the kind of hardcore event which doesn’t come …
Julius Caesar (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre
June 12, 2009
Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/7295.aspx I’ve seen a wide variety of techniques used to conjure up the crowd who act as onstage witnesses to the orations that form the climactic set piece of Julius Caesar. Sometimes actors have moved among the audience, implicitly bolstering their numbers with the seated masses. At other times, offstage shouting …
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