1991
The State Theatre Company opens its 1991 season next Tuesday night with Julius Caesar. Murray Bramwell talks about the production with director, Simon Phillips and actors, Carmel McGlone and Hugo Weaving.
Although written in 1599, straight after Henry V, Julius Caesar has little of the historical and moral certainty of Henry. Instead, it is an examination of the perils and complications of power. Shakespeare’s audience, well used to cautionary tales from history, would have recognised the pertinence of the play at a time when the reign of Elizabeth I was increasingly threatened by overthrow and civil strife. In telling the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar by men motivated by apparently honourable intentions, the playwright was raising ethical problems which had immediate implication.
These days, because these questions are still very much a part of the politics of the 20th century, it is no surprise that Julius Caesar has often been revived . Orson Welles staged a modern-dress production in 1937 and in 1953 John Houseman, then a producer for MGM, put together a film version featuring John Gielgud, James Mason and a memorable Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony. There have also been frequent stagings in the UK in the past twenty years.
The State Theatre Company have brought their Julius Caesar to the present day and are calling it a political thriller. Director Simon Phillips talks about the production:
“It’s called the tragedy of Julius Caesar and yet Caesar dies half way through. That separates it from all the other tragedies where you get to know a figure, love him for all his faults and then watch him die at the end. Caesar is a relatively small part, it is a figurehead play. What you really get is an extraordinary concentration on two men- Brutus and Cassius- coming to terms with personal and public dilemmas. They plot an assassination and then discover that what is unleashed when you abandon the social order is something else again.”
“Julius Caesar is not a play about the status quo. it is about what happens when the status quo is torn down without there being a clear sense of what is to built up afterwards. Really it is the tragedy of Cassius and Brutus, most particularly Brutus, because he is the one most plainly in a moral bind.”
“I think Brutus is a thoughtful and actually good man whose Achilles heel is that although he doesn’t like being flattered- he’s embarrassed when Cassius tries to- he nevertheless wants people to admire him. He’s not good at action. The decisions he makes are ones he makes in a corner and then they are wrong- all wrong, every political decision he makes is wrong.”
Actor Hugo Weaving is no stranger to the Adelaide stage having appeared in Private Lives and Ring Around the Moon in recent years. Attracted by the chance to work with Simon Phillips, he is enthusiastic about playing the role of Brutus.
“Everyone says Brutus is noble and honest and gentle,” Weaving observes, “but actually you see him in turmoil. His dilemma is to kill a man he loves and admires for the good of his country. It is an act he would normally abhor and he finds himself doing it. I think he slides into that act. He believes it has to be done, but he can’t quite justify it.”
“Brutus is a republican opposing a one-man system and he finds himself with blood on his hands. To justify that he starts talking about sacrifice and doing things nobly and making a ritual out of it. He talks about carving Caesar rather than hewing him. Even though he is killing him and spilling his blood, it is a sacrificial act.”
So is the playwright having his political two bob each way ?
“I think Shakespeare is always complex,” comments Phillips, “We often see him pay lip service to the broad autocratic sway of opinion and then he questions it. I think he recognises the necessity for ruthlessness in political strength and with Caesar he paints a picture of an admirable figure. You see both the humanist and the autocrat at work. In the twentieth century it is very easy to see the autocratic side of Caesar. In terms of the play I think it is about a great leader falling, or a very-much-greater- leader-than-might-have-been falling.”
Phillips, with set designer Shaun Gurton and costume designer Bronwyn Jones, has opted for a contemporary setting.
“There are no skirts or bath towels. It is not untenable to do it in Roman dress but it is bloody difficult. Shakespeare never saw it that way, there are lines which indicate he wrote it to be played in Elizabethan attire.”
“We have looked at it for its history,” says Phillips, “And we have in essence abandoned the history of it because of that. The play has so much to say which is immediate. It’s probably fine to put it in togas and let what it has to say ring in the twentieth century but I feel that by actually thrusting it forward, it rings more profoundly and excitingly.”
“I’m trying to convey the extent to which if you want to persuade the majority of the population, you use the media- you don’t just stand up in the marketplace and say `This is what’s good for you.’ The conspirators chose Brutus because they think he’ll be a great figurehead in the media. He’s young, glamorous, respected -he’s JFK. He’s seen as a great public representative but, as it happens, his own conscience gets in the way of his ability to promote himself in the media.”
Not only has Phillips set the play in the present, he has cast some of the male roles with women actors. This includes the part of Mark Anthony who is played by the often-praised actor, Carmel McGlone.
“The concept of using more women came to mind at the very moment I chose the play,” Phillips explains,” because industrially at the moment I felt it was unfair to do a play which required 45 men and two women in relatively minor roles. So I had a practical issue in mind. Then, when I reread the play with a view to casting more women, the more I read, the more convinced I became that not only was it possible, but there were positive advantages to looking at women in the twentieth century context. ”
“When you look at what sort of political figure Mark Anthony is, some of the ambiguities are heightened by casting a woman in the role. She is trusted by the conspirators and she uses the media very effectively and then there’s the shock and ambiguity of her behaviour in the second half of the play. In the marketplace she is promising seventy five drachmas for everybody then she’s saying lets get the will and see how far we can cut back on things- and she starts killing off people. She’s no Joan of Arc. Mark Anthony wins- and yet it is Brutus who has more scruple about things.”
Carmel McGlone, a distinguished member of the State ensemble in last year’s season, describes the role of Mark Anthony as “a massive challenge.” She adds,” I’m trying to delve into the machinations of a mind, a female mind tht would have a job like that in politics. How does she think ? There aren’t a huge number of role models I can access easily. Besides, I think the question of gender is
subordinate to the task of trying to understand that person and what she does. What sort of person is at home in the lion’s den. That’s what I have to grasp.”
Phillips is careful not to over-emphasise the casting changes. “Carmel playing Mark Anthony is going to be a talking point,” he concedes, “But I hope that it isn’t going to swamp reaction to the play in a petty sense. I don’t mind if it is a talking point in terms of the play but I’m hoping it doesn’t become a focus which actually stops people from looking at the play as a whole and what we are trying to examine.”
“I wanted to look at the gamut of political possibilities. We have in the play two women, Calphurnia and Portia, the wives of Caesar and Brutus, who are outside the world of politics and represent a softer, more feminine point of view. In casting two other roles- Mark Anthony and Casca- I wanted to redress that and look at the extent to which women in politics are forced into being various versions of Mark Anthony.”
“In setting it in the present I have tried to say this is not about then, it is about now, but I have tried to avoid saying, for instance, this is about Romania it is not about us. I want the play to echo through the world with a general examination of 20th century politics and not latch on to making it tell a specific story, because it doesn’t.”
“While it deals with a physical murder and a physical war, it is also a metaphor for any form of political `assassination’. It is about political dismissal and the post-leadership challenge battle. It is the study of a coup, bloody or otherwise.”
Hugo Weaving is quick to see the contemporary resonances- “You only need to turn on TV and watch the telecasts of parliament and the Gulf war reports, there are so many assassinations, real and metaphorical.” He also makes a point of mentioning Ian McDonald’s music for the play – “The music really helps the thriller aspect. It makes it quite filmic. You start to use the music as part of your performance, I’ve never done that before.”
“It’s a very timely play,” Carmel McGlone agrees, “politics and war are so much in the forefront of our minds. It’s happening right now – we are all trying to figure out the goings on which happen behind the doors, we only get glimpses in the newspapers. Julius Caesar shows the attempts to use euphemism to depersonalise and sanitise events – people are saying `This isn’t what it looks like’ and there is this bloodied thing in front of them ! It is so close to things now, it staggers me that the play is four hundred years old.”
The Advertiser, February, 1991.