Word: caesar
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...without serving the playwright; such was the case with several of the American Shakespeare Theatre's early efforts. But it is possible to throw fresh light on the text through modern-dress productions, as Michael Kahn did here with his Love's Labour's Lost in 1968. Freedman's Caesar takes numerous risks, and for the most part succeeds surprisingly well...
Freedman's concept has been aided by Robin Wagner's settings and Michael J. Cesario's costumes. Wagner, who did the sets for Kahn's 1973 Caesar here, has this time designed a huge three-dimensional grid of steel rods. Walls, glass panels and movable furniture slide in and out as required. The effect suggests a technological society surrounded by steel and glass; the only color is gray...
...when opened turns out to contain knives for the murder (one recalls the old-time gangsters who used to conceal machine guns inside violin cases). The conspirators wear three-piece business suits. The conspiracy is hatched in a cocktail lounge; Artemidorus, the rhetoric teacher, who will try to warn Caesar of the plot, has become a journalist who eavesdrops and takes notes in a reporter's pad. The Soothsayer is a blind man hawking copies of an astrology magazine. Mark Antony, on his first appearance, wears a jogging suit and running shoes. In his domestic scene with his wife, Caesar...
This is not the first time that Caesar and cinema have met. Of the roughly 400 silent films adapted from Shakespeare's plays between 1899 and 1929, there are ten versions of Caesar, the first being a French effort of 1907. In the half century since 1929, about 50 sound films have been made, including three of Caesar, all American. The straightforward 1953 version, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz--with James Mason's Brutus, John Gielgud's Cassius. Marlon Brando's Antony, and the late Louis Calhern's Caesar--remains the only excellent Shakespearean film ever done in our country...
...cannot forever put off mentioning Robert Burr's disappointing Caesar. We are prepared for him by an onstage brass band and drum, but when he at last appears we see a most ordinary man (dressed up, to be sure), lacking all force of personality. By no stretch of the imagination could Cassius say that this Caesar " doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." In the brief colloquy between Caesar and Decius Brutus, the latter exhibits much more magnetism, as played by James Harper, and I wish the two actors had exchanged roles...