Word: brutus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...less out of commission--a physically huge man, stuck behind a small desk in a tiny Boston law firm--far removed from the power scene that he once ruled. He's mellowed now too, given to reminiscing about his past triumphs, his friends, and most of all his final Brutus-like undoing at the hand of the liberals on the city council...
...Stage/West cast is competent without being proficient, though Rombola's Cat has a disarmingly baffled naiveté and Scott's Memphis-Cleopatra is both perky and voluptuous. As of now, Marcus Brutus is more than a first draft and less than a finished drama, but certainly worth the doing as an intriguing work in progress...
Playwright Paul Foster is not a newcomer to the stage. His Tom Paine (1968) enjoyed substantial popularity off-Broadway, particularly with younger audiences, thanks in part to Tom O'Horgan's flamboyant staging. In Marcus Brutus, Foster has followed Tom Stoppard's lead in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Just as R. & G. used Hamlet for its substructure, Marcus Brutus uses Julius Caesar...
...young playwright named simply Cat (Ed Rombola) conjures up the spirits of the ancient Roman conspirators. They hover over his typewriter in his New York apartment. Cat also summons up Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, who doubles as his actress girl friend Memphis (Lea Scott). He tells them that since Brutus is a rational man and "rational men don't kill," he plans to revise their destinies so that Caesar will not be assassinated in the forum...
Gorily Slain. But Cat finds that the forces of history prove inexorable, and Caesar is gorily slain again. It might be argued that Foster has provided, though he fails to pursue, a plausible motive for Brutus' act. Brutus discovers that he is Caesar's natural son and takes his vengeance for not being designated Caesar's heir. This, of course, is a longstanding historical rumor, though no proof has ever been adduced for it. Foster's cautionary political moral is that no man of Brutus' nobility of reason would commit such an act without...