Seattle Shakespeare Company Takes On Julius Caesar

With 2017 being the year that it is, it was with some trepidation that I went to see Julius Caesar today.  While I love Seattle Shakespeare's work, a number of productions have used productions of the play this year to score ham-fisted political points, in a year following a contentious elections.

I expected more from Seattle Shakespeare....and I got it.

The idea of using this play as a symbolic representation of an elected representative whose power is severely constrained by our 3 branches of government, including a court system, is frankly ludicrous. Further, a big point raised by Shakespeare in the text is that Caesar was a POTENTIAL dictator who was killed out of hand before he had a chance to show whether he would be a dictator...or would not. Further, the rash act of assassinating him ultimately ushered in the dictatorship (the rise of Octavius Caesar and Imperial Rome) he was murdered to avoid. This play amply demonstrates the risks of acting rashly and creating the very awful situation rash people had been trying to avoid.

If anything, the presentation of this play was remarkably even handed. Casual antifa-like characters slaughter a poet who has the misfortune of bearing the same name as one of Caesar's killers, while the short-lived triumvirate of Antony/Octavius/Lepidus casually prick off people to be murdered in a grotesque parody of political compromise. Murder becomes a tedious duty, sort of an ancient Rome as Belfast. There was lots of casual violence and some vague talk of liberty that remained as vague as it too often does today.

I think my favorite parts of this production were the relationships between Brutus and Portia, Brutus and Cassius, Brutus and Caesar. And all these actors were up to the challenge of those roles.

Managing director, John Bradshaw wrote some very well-considered comments for the program of this play. He notes that in 2011, some patrons were freaking out about the casting of male parts for women. Those patrons surely hated last season's brilliant all-female casting of Bring Down the House, which is completely their loss. Thank you John Bradshaw and the rest of the production team for crediting your audience with some intelligence. Politics are very complicated these days, with many seeing last year's presidential election as a rigged battle between two unlikable candidates, both of whom would be invested by their partisans with too much power. As someone utterly contemptuous of both major parties and their shared interest in unfettered power at the expense of the other half of the populace, I am deeply grateful to Seattle Shakespeare for not taking the simple....and wrong....way to a simple narrative.

Next month, I am going to my alma mater back East and will see their production of this play too. I only hope that they also take the high road and not the easy way out.

Cleanup during the intermission. Not as intensive as the Titus Andronicus cleanup.

Production Team

George Mount (Director)
Craig Wollam (scenic design)
Doris Black (costume design)
Roberta Russell (lighting design)
Erik Siegling and Robertson Witmer (sound design)
MJ Sieber (video and projections design)
Peter Dylan O’Connor (fight choreographer).

Cast

Allan Armstrong (Trebonius/Rioter)
Annie Yim (Marullus/Cinna/Rioter)
Arlando Smith (Decius/Rioter)
Bradford Farwell (Cassius)
Brian Simmons (Metellus/Rioter)
Bridget McKevitt (Cicero/Antony Servant/Citizen)
Chantal DeGroat (Casca)
David Rock (Lepidus/Popilius/Octavius Servant)
Dylan Zucati (Lucius/Citizen)
Jaime Riggs (Flavius/Artimedorus/Cinna the Poet)
Lorenzo Roberts (Marc Antony)
Macall Gordon (Calpurnia/Pindarus)
Peter Crook (Julius Caesar)
Reginald Andre Jackson (Brutus)
Sunam Ellis (Portia/Citizen)
Tyler Trerise (Soothsayer/Octavius).