Theatre review: Julius Caesar(Shakespeare's Globe & Tour)

Straight after a play about a tyrant going unnoticed until it's too late and he's grabbed all the power, I'm off to Shakespeare's play about a potential tyrant who's disposed of before he can do any damage; although whether the threat was ever real is the big question in Julius Caesar. It's this year's Tiny Tour show from the Globe, with eight actors taking on all the roles (and some extra economising in that there's no additional onstage musicians this year.) Diane Page directs Globe veteran Dickon Tyrrell in the plum part that gives an actor the title role, a dramatic death scene, and plenty of time to nap backstage. Caesar has just defeated Rome's previous hero-turned-villain, Pompey, in battle at the start of the play, and the city has shown its gratitude by offering him the crown. He's grudgingly accepted, but was his initial refusal the gentleman protesting too much? Cassius (Charlotte Bate) thinks so.

She's assembled a faction of supporters for her conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, but knows that to really give the plot validity and not have the people turn on them, she needs the support of Brutus (Anna Crichlow,) beloved of both Caesar and the people.

She gets this by forging letters from the citizens, claiming they're terrified of what Caesar will do to them once he takes over, and Brutus joins in with the assassination. But they haven't fully considered the power vacuum that leaves, and when Caesar's most loyal lieutenant turns the crowd against them, the conspirators suddenly find themselves in the middle of a civil war.

I've seen a couple of productions I've loved but for the most part Julius Caesar isn't one of the Shakespeare plays I get excited about. The first half can manage a great buildup of tension but more often than not it's a bunch of men endlessly talking; the second half somehow manages to make constant battles even duller, as everyone sits in their tents bickering. This won't join the ranks of the great productions for me but it's not a complete snooze either: Page hasn't managed to inject dynamism into the plotting, but she has managed to make the mass of conspirators distinct, which is more than you can say for many productions, let alone when the actors have half a dozen other roles each as well. So Bate's underhand Cassius contrasts with Crichlow's earnest Brutus, and Jack Myers' reptilian Casca; given the gender-swapped characters, it's a shame the suggestion of a flirtation between Cassius and Casca isn't followed up.

As Decius, Omar Bynon gets to be the comic relief among the conspirators, in part because all the role doubling means everyone's bringing out all their regional accents to distinguish between them; it's not every Caesar who gets told "I come to fetch you t'senate-house." In fact the production is quite good at finding the comedy in moments such as Shakespeare's bizarre little meta moment where, just after the assassination, he has the actors playing conspirators ponder over the fact that some day actors will play the conspirators, but they're definitely the real ones.

Even the most famous speech gets a lot of laughs as it's acknowledged how arch it is: Samuel Oatley's Mark Antony first appears almost as a dim Love Island contestant; his wandering around the yard with his chest out is so shamelessly gratuitous that Joshua Lacey ought to worry someone's stealing his act. Once we get to "Friends, Romans, countrymen," he's still playing up to a confused, lumbering persona, who apologises for his lack of oratorial skills while expertly saying the exact opposite of what he appears to be saying about Brutus. I don't know if I'm imagining that audiences laugh more at this speech now than they did when I first saw the play thirty or so years ago, or if we've just had so many political snake-oil salesmen in the last decade that everyone recognises the manipulation for what it is*.

After the interval (and this is a play that works better without one) there's a bit more of the Globe's signature audience engagement that stops the play from entirely getting lost in tent-based bickering. Overall this isn't a production that entirely avoids the pitfalls that can make the play monotonous, but it does manage a decent amount of moments that liven things up and draw your attention back.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 10th of September at Shakespeare's Globe; and continuing on tour to Oxford, Cambridge, Totnes, West Horsley, Hove and Canterbury.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

*although the laughs over Brutus, who is explicitly female in this production, being referred to as both "she" and "an honourable man" were of the unintentional kind, and I honestly don't know what's wrong with adding one syllable to make it "woman." I will always advocate sacrificing scansion over sense, cf the guaranteed tumbleweed of A Midsummer Night's Dream's "Do you marry him."