![]() ![]() ![]() Calpurnia, rolling all her Rs and jumbling her sentence structure, almost succeeds in seducing him into staying at home on this dangerous Ides of March. Then, just to be sure we haven’t missed it, he sets the scene preceding the murder in a bathtub full of steaming water. Eustis is so afraid we won’t get it, he even adds words to Caesar’s opening statements, having him directly address the good people of New York, telling them he is the greatest, that he will please them bigly. His Calpurnia (Tina Benko) walks with a sneer and speaks with an exaggerated Slovenian accent. This JC strides the earth like a Donald-cloned Colossus, replete with the long red tie and the bright yellow pompadour. His Julius Caesar is more about itself than it is about anything verging on what Shakespeare created. The writing is strong enough to work without the cartoonishly overblown visual references this director supplies. The audience would extrapolate the underlying meaning without graphic detail. It might have been set anywhere in the US, the title character played as any generic American politician. If Eustis had cast a Trump-ish leader without the multiple specifics that make this one exclusively Donald Trump, the play might have prevailed. Julius Caesar is as much Frank Underwood ( House of Cards) or Don Draper ( Mad Men) as he is the self-proclaimed Roman god. Having chosen to contemporize the play, Eustis could have preserved it and made it work in the way that some of our best popular entertainment works. ![]() the eye sees not itself/ But by reflection.” If the play were the thing wherein to catch the conscience of a despot, then the slings and arrows of post-Pompey Rome should be the perfect foil for our present morass.īut Shakespeare’s play is lost in a jumble of ill-fitting implications. And what is art if not the means by which we see ourselves? As Brutus tells Cassius, “. It’s about the corruption of power, about the way in which the fickle masses aggrandize false prophets, the way we easily relinquish our power to undeserving leaders. Theoretically, this play is an apt mirror unto our times. He is a narcissist, a pompous blowhard, whose rise to power is entirely the folly of the rabble that Marullus addresses at the top of the play as, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” These modern day “hard hearts of Rome” have raised up a feeble prince as their savior, and it is his inadequacy that destroys the current production at its core. His ambition may sometimes pose as patriotism, but he abhors the body politic and disdains his fellow citizens. The current American POTUS believes in nothing and in no one but himself. As trusted as a politician might be, that Caesar is an upholder of the Republic, a servant of the people. In Shakespeare’s version of the tale, he is a true patriot, whose vaulting ambition undermines his love of country. He was, in theory at least, a proponent of human rights. In his will, the real Caesar named the people of Rome among his heirs, and much of his property was turned over to the city. The players have a firm grasp on their characters, but #45 is anything but the brilliant tactician, valiant soldier, and learned scholar Julius Caesar was. The fault is not in the stars but in our President. That guy in the White House is no Julius Caesar. Anyone who took Latin read of Caesar’s exploits in his own words. We’ve studied Caesar in history, in literature. It is akin to Dan Quayle’s self-comparison to JFK. It’s a silly notion from the get-go likening the Carrot-in-Chief to the second noblest Roman of them all. The mayhem that ensues seems unmotivated. This Caesar plunges stupidly into the senators’ trap, dying ignominiously in a moment closer to commedia dell’arte than tragic drama. He has dressed his Julius Caesar as a lean and hungry Trump, who struts and frets his overlong hour upon the stage as a great buffoon. Director Oskar Eustis has set the tale first in New York City then in Washington, D.C., in the time of our current great distress. The main problem with the Public Theatre’s production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, now playing at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, is that its frame is warped. Shakespeare in the Park is irresistible because. ![]()
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