The Retelling of an Old Tale: Julius Caesar

March 7, 2008

by Brian McLoone

Arthur Nauzyciel’s production of Julius Caesar, now running at the American Repertory Theatre, is a gripping, self-conscious portrayal of a perennially germane play. It is common among reviews of political classics like 1984, Brave New World, and Julius Caesar, that an otherwise stoic critic will note that the play or book is “more relevant now than ever before.” Such laudations have become the norm on the dust jackets of humanity’s collection of manifestos, and so I try to always shy away from such descriptions in my own reviews. Unfortunately, it’s hard not to at least capture the tone of such a remark when talking about this contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic piece — so my apologies to the reader.

And to be fair, Nauzyciel’s directing portrays the bland, amoral bureaucracy of a corrupted government made up of lifeless monsters, so it’s hardly a stretch to make a connection to our own attempt at governance. Perhaps most evident (and most relevant) in his story is that politics has no heroes. The so-called representatives of the people are villainous or naïve, cunning or simply misguided. They are, in either case, purely in the game for their own egoism and self-aggrandizing tendencies. Nauzyciel illustrates this fact vividly and bravely in a variety of theatrical tones. The backdrop of the performance, as one example, is an image of a large, empty theater. It’s therefore unclear for whom Brutus, Cassius, Antony, and his beloved Caesar are performing. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that they are performing. The whole production is an act, and it seems unclear that either side — the entrenched dictator or the ambitious senators — really cares who comes out on top. One gets the sense, in other words, that both parties are in it purely for the entertainment value of a coup.

Such an approach is surprisingly timely now (oops, there I said it), when the differences between political parties in our own republic are so small as to be virtually inexistent. This is plainly obvious to anyone reasonable enough to look above the festivities and understand that no party has the true interests of the countrymen in mind. This is self-evidently the case in Julius Caesar, when Brutus and Cassius decide to take gruesome measures to ensure that their assassination of Caesar will appear noble to the idiot masses who crowd the streets of Rome.

To this extent, it’s incredible how the logic of Victorian England mirrors exactly the underlying assumptions of political discourse today. In Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, he admits that in college he realized the incoherence of institutions like monogamy and American imperialism. He writes that he eventually realized, however, that such institutions are entirely necessary to maintain the order of our society. This is a clear echo of a sentiment held by John Adams, who sought to ensure that the government kept the “permanent interests” of the United States firmly intact — those interests, of course, being the economic domination of a very small segment of the population, a group who hardly has time to deal with the maniacal requests of the rest of the citizenry.

At the beginning of the production, Brutus walks out and stares at the crowd then looks at his shadow on an eerie white block in the center of the stage. Such a behavior reflects the overall tone of the play — that is, the politicians recognize their place as rulers of a crowd, a god reflected on a blank slate, waiting to write history. Unmistakably, this recognition of power does not translate directly toward a demeanor of seriousness. At the end of the play, when everyone has been killed, the country is in turmoil, and tyranny has shown itself to be the product of a so-called democratic revolt, the cast dances to “Say it Right” by Nelly Furtado, hand in hand. In other words, the self-styled defenders of justice will inevitably sip cocktails with those whom they once branded as “evil.” Bill Clinton, the liar and war criminal, who now parades around as a sage of political wisdom, will invariably sit with those whom he has insulted in the past, recognizing the similarities he shares with them all — a taste for exploiting the southern hemisphere, promoting war, and breaking well-established norms of justice. If this were something resembling a reasonable society, this would hardly be the case. The political class does not care about popular interests, just as they didn’t in the time of Caesar or Shakespeare. It’s curious that we think there is something different about our own time.