Mark Bold

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was never intended to be a simple retelling of the tragic fate of the great Roman general and statesman. In its explicit analysis of political ambition and the nature of democracy and authority, it is foremost a philosophical work. This season’s interpretation by David Farr at the RSC accentuates the contemporary parallels of the play, setting the historical elements in a backdrop of media saturation and spin, and the civil strife that follows the fall of a tyrant. Pictures of demagogues and presidents, notably Silvio Berlusconi, dominate the accompanying programme, which also contains essays from current political thinkers, and the actors wear mostly the military-casual fashions of anti-globalisation protesters. The performance is meant as a strong comment on the current state of politics.

At the centre of the play’s intrigues and concerns is, of course, Caesar himself, played here by Christopher Saul as less a military man and more a media-savvy politician. With his smart Italian suits and relaxed way with the public, he is a sharp portrayal of today’s political class. And with his power almost out of control and his dubious political connections, the portrait is given an even more vivid and accurate dimension.

Those around him, so concerned to limit his runaway power and popularity, chew on the problems of authority and power like characters in The Sopranos, fretting in leather jackets, gold chains and white vests, whispering and never saying anything directly. Especially Cassius (Adrian Schiller), who seems preoccupied with creating a more democratic arrangement of power in Rome. Caesar knows the threat that these ideals pose - ‘He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’ The heart of the drama that Shakespeare presents, and which resonates with the current climate, is whether these thoughts and intentions are motivated by benign ideals, or envious attempts at obtaining power and wealth. Cassius has thought the problem through, and is aware that democracy may not be the best way of governing society. ‘And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.’ His thoughts turn on the problem that perhaps the public needs strong leadership.

How the public behaves is the important backdrop to the political intrigues dominating the play’s dramatic action. In Farr’s staging, it is mediation and image saturation that brings out the Citizens of the Roman forum and connects them with the plight of those living under mediated democracies in the present time. In a Brechtian use of the stage, it is apparently members of the public who move lights and hold video cameras to the faces of the politicians, who put up the screens for video playback and shout down the orations of the political contenders. At the back of the stage, musicians appear to improvise on synthesizers, and stage effects are provided by extras without regard for any naturalistic stagecraft conventions. It is as if the protesters at a G8 summit are making their dissatisfaction clear, or occasionally showing their approval.

Of course, Shakespeare shows us the worryingly contrary behaviour of the crowd. Just because he shares his name with one of the conspirators who have murdered Caesar, the poet Cinna, on his way to the funeral, is lynched and killed by a hysterical mob. And the centrepiece of the whole play, Mark Anthony’s famous speech at the funeral, is still a masterpiece of rhetoric and crowd manipulation today as it must have been when the play was written. As Brutus (Zubin Varla) has gained the support of the Citizens for the conspirators’ murder of Caesar, so Anthony’s brilliant speech unwinds this approval and unleashes the hysterical hatred of the crowd against the plotters. As Gary Oliver gives the speech, in front of video close ups of Caesar’s butchered body, his image repeated on giant video screens, the insistent reassurance that Brutus ‘is an honourable man’ is devastatingly ironic. It is still the same in present times, when too much coverage is a danger to the support of a fickle but enfranchised TV audience.

With the tyrant murdered, the Republic is threatened by a war against the conspirators. On the apparent side of good, Mark Anthony and Octavious (Laurence Mitchell), Caesar’s nephew, have the appearance of two modern-day warriors. Cassius describes the pair as ‘A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, Join’d with a masquer and a reveller’, and it is not hard to spot the similarities with the two leaders of the modern coalition that never doubts it is fighting for justice. And like our modern conflicts, while there is widespread death and destruction, the original questions of leadership and democracy are not solved.

JULIUS CAESAR, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon