Julius Caesar, and: Antony and Cleopatra, and: Titus Andronicus (review)

In his program note introducing the RSC’s Rome Season, director Angus Jackson asserted, accurately, that the stories of “politics, power play, and corruption seem more pertinent than ever before.” However, I attended the first three main-stage installments near the end of summer 2017, and although all three were worthy endeavors with many strengths, only Blanche McIntyre’s Titus Andronicus—with its contemporary setting and representations of misogynistic and xenophobic violence—kept the connections with current events close to the surface. Jackson’s Julius Caesarand Iqbal Khan’s Antony and Cleopatra, set squarely in the distant past, gestured occasionally in the direction of today’s political and social issues, but the gestures were buried in what was still, thankfully, quite compelling theater.

Unusually for the RSC, all three productions shared a base set, designed by Robert Innes Hopkins. The bronze-tiled floor never changed. Straight-edged columns stood at the back of an elevated platform for the first halves of Caesarand Antony, and all of Titus. Titusalso featured glass windows between the columns and a metal-barred barrier before the platform, providing a sense of physical division. Caesarstarted with a larger-than-life, white marble statue of a horse wrestling a lion center stage, and that statue reappeared, albeit smaller in stature, in both Antony’sand Titus’sRomes. Hopkins also costumed the three plays: Caesarand Antonywere classically attired—typical togas, robes, and armor. Tituswas contemporarily clothed: red jumpsuits for the prisoner Goths, military dress uniforms and camouflage fatigues for the Andronici. While I preferred Titus’s overall aesthetic, I wondered how the trilogy might have played differently had the design been completely unified.

What stood out most in Jackson’s Julius Caesarwere the performances of the four central roles. Although I did not care for all, each was certainly marked by sharp choices, none more so than Martin Hutson’s extraordinarily sympathetic and energetic Cassius. Hutson played Cassius not as a shrewd villain, but as a man genuinely angry about and afraid of Caesar. Rather than carefully, cleverly manipulating Brutus during 1.2, Hutson pleaded earnestly, putting special emphasis on “Men at sometimes are masters of their fates” (cf. 1.2.140), not...