JULIUS
CAESAR
Shakespeare's Globe
23.06.2014
A first look at Dominic Dromgoole's new
Caesar. You won't find a rowdier production – the Lupercalia is in
full swing here, with street entertainers noisily working the piazza,
and the citizenry in full cry in the yard.
All credit to the company – which
includes some familiar Globe faces – for changing the mood from
raucous to rapt in an instant.
This is what used to be called “original
practices”, with costumes which the first audience on Bankside
[1599] would recognise. Plenty of Roman touches, though, especially
in the armies. The “pulpit” perhaps the one idea that looks
wrong, though I can see why you wouldn't want to do all that from the
balcony in front of the musicians' gallery. [Claire van Kampen's
music is intriguingly exotic.]
Resourceful doubling from the cast; Will
Mannering on fine form as Metellus Cimber and the unfortunate Cinna
the Poet, George Irving [spoiler alert] has a slyly significant
second coming, and plays a mafia boss of a Caesar, whose bloody
demise [the effect enhanced by a rain-dampened forestage] provides
plenty of gore for the eager hands of the young conspirators. Tom
McKay as Brutus, Joe Jameson as Octavius, and Luke Thompson as Mark
Anthony – excellent at rage, less successful in subtlety.
A lively, energetic look at the sharp end
of political power.
