There’s an honourable track record of versions of Shakespeare’s play presenting Julius Caesar as a dictatorial monster of modern times. In 1937 Orson Welles (playing Brutus) cast Caesar as Mussolini and staged many scenes like Nazi rallies. Despite a curmudgeonly critic dismissing the conspirators as looking like ‘a committee from a taxi-driver’s union’, the show was a huge hit and set in motion a train of similar readings. In Miami in 1986 audiences applauded the murderous disposal of Fidel Castro. At the RSC the following year Terry Hands directed a nakedly fascist Caesar, while in London in 1993 Caesar was played by a woman, thus supposedly representing the political assassination of Margaret Thatcher.
So there’s little novelty in the RSC now tackling the play ‘with a little help from Idi Amin and Mugabe’ as a headline in the Daily Telegraph put it. The real novelty is that Gregory Doran, who in September takes over from Michael Boyd as artistic director, sets the play in an indeterminate modern African state and directs an all-black cast. Doran says he got the idea from seeing a Complete Shakespeare from Robben Island, annotated by Nelson Mandela to the effect that the play has a special message for Africa.
As the RSC is no stranger to importing productions from all over the world, you’re only surprised that Doran hasn’t pulled in an off-the-shelf Julius Caesar from Africa. Still, it was doubtless irresistible to attempt his own take by working with the many fine British black actors still in touch with their roots. Who better for Mark Antony than Ray Fearon, or for Brutus than Paterson Joseph, happy to revel in his East African accent? — ‘a really sweet sound and it just, for me, lifted the play out of any clichés about Julius Caesar, and any clichés about Shakespeare’.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in