Summary
The Actors' Shakespeare Project staging (directed by Robert Scanlon for the play's intelligence and passion) begins with a man who looks as we imagine Will Shakespeare to look, sitting at a desk, quill pen in hand, hurriedly writing while impatient actors begin to gather around him and we in the audience await a play. Immediacy is the catch word for this production; everything is of the moment which works marvelously well for a play that dashes along as "[Julius Caesar]" does. ("Shakespeare" even steps into the action a couple of times toward the play's conclusion as if considering a rewrite, a ploy that works less well.)
[Greg Steres] is excellent as a Caesar worn out from battles far away in the hinterlands yet ambitious for power at home. Robert Walsh's Brutus, an upright politician, is a man whose personal nobility ill equips him for the action he takes against Caesar and its consequences - his trying to sort through a business he isn't Machiavellian enough to handle is fascinating to watch. As the maneuvering trickster Cassius, Benjamin Evett is mesmerizing as the spider who needs a buffalo like Brutus to give his plot the look of patriotism not treachery.[Marc Antony] is immensely appealing as [Dorian Christian Baucom] portrays him, the sort of friend we'd all like to have, one who watches our back and cares about us now when we're living and later after we're gone. The actor is not always up to speaking Shakespeare's long passages without taking breaths he isn't meant to take, but he always engages our emotions which is what makes this role so memorable.See the full content of this document
Extract
Shakespeare Project Stages 'Julius Caesar'
When Dorian Christian Baucom as Marc Antony, sees the mangled body of his hero and friend, Julius Caesar, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the senate, his words are but a gasp, "Oh, mighty Caesar, doest thy lie so low?"
It is the moment in "Julius Caesar" that Shakespeare's drama about a brutal assassination moves beyond mere his...See the full content of this document
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