Content area
Full Text
I was fortunate enough to see Nicholas Hytner's modern-dress Julius Caesar at the newly built Bridge Theatre twice during its three-month run. The production was staged in the round with seats on three levels and a large pit for promenading spectators. Both times I chose to sit rather than enter into the immersive spirit with a promenading ticket. The lure of a comfortable seat with my own space, support for my back, and a civilized (albeit plastic) glass of wine proved too enticing to resist. However, my viewing experience was markedly altered in my second visit because I accompanied twenty students, all of whom were standing. As a result, I found myself doubly engaged—both watching the action unfolding on Bunny Christie's remarkably inventive set and watching my students. This was not a style of promenade theater I had ever experienced before. Standing audience members were shepherded, shouted at, prodded, and pushed to the floor by efficient and occasionally officious marshals. Stage blocks rose and subsided; smoke, detritus, and balloons rained down from above; and, at the climax of the Battle of Philippi, a victorious Antony and Octavius Caesar drove out into the crowd in a full-size military vehicle.
The sound was at times almost deafening. The production opened to a band playing tracks from Oasis and The White Stripes, before leading a remarkably acquiescent, air-punching audience in a rendition of "We're Not Going to Take It" by Twisted Sister. Marshals walked through the crowd pushing trolleys laden with beer, pro-Caesar t-shirts, and red baseball caps bearing the logo "do this," taken from Antony's line "When Caesar says 'do this,' it is performed" (1.2.10). The whole milieu was clearly intended to evoke the populism of a Donald Trump-style political rally. However, once the play started, the references to specific political leaders were far less overt. This was, thankfully, far from a repeat of the 2017 production by the Public Theater in New York, when Caesar was styled with a Trumpian shock of hair and accompanied by an Eastern-European Calpurnia.
Many...