When Justice Isn't Served

Note from Jenna: I just returned from a two-week trip to Ireland and England. This is my review of a production my colleagues and I saw in Dublin.


Dublin -- Attending a Shakespeare play, or any play for that matter, is always a gamble: will it dazzle and invigorate, or will it rock you to sleep.
The Abbey Theatre Company’s production of “Julius Caesar,” which I saw on March 13, fell somewhere in between: it wasn’t bad, yet it wasn’t exceptionally good. The set was interesting enough; the brief interludes of intense, throbbing music were effective. Most of the 34-member cast delivered decent performances, and a few really shined. But you just didn’t leave the show thinking, “Wow. That was outstanding.”
If your high school memories of studying this Shakespearean tragedy are a bit fuzzy, the basic story is this: It’s 44 B.C. in Rome. The beloved Caesar is stabbed to death by traitors. The traitors intend to win the affection of the people, but Caesar’s loyalists, led by Marc Antony, retaliate.
A battle ensues. The traitors fumble. The loyalists triumph.
The show, which ran through March 17, was directed by Jason Byrne. The 35-year-old directed the same play ten years ago with his company Loose Cannon. Given Byrne’s fairly young age, one might have expected a contemporary interpretation or a few modern twists. Such was not the case. Byrne took a fairly traditional approach, delivering a play that felt stark and pure. There were no ornate costumes or elaborate sets; the focus was squarely on the dialogue.
In the first three acts, which came before intermission, we watched as Caesar’s traitors, led by Cassius and Brutus, schemed their murder of the king and ultimately stabbed him to death on the Ides of March.
The set was quite barren: an empty space surrounded by gray walls and punctuated with moody lighting. The costumes were equally ascetic: the men were wrapped in khaki and gray sheets; the only bolts of color we saw were a green dress worn by Caesar’s wife, and a purple gown worn by Porsia, the wife of Brutus.
In the play’s second half – acts four and five – we found the characters on a sparsely lit battlefield, wearing gladiator uniforms. This part of the show was laden with distracting quirks. In one scene, Cassius and Brutus stood under what looked like a mess tent that might be featured in an episode of MASH. To add to it, classical music played from a gramophone sitting on a table.
Acts four and five certainly had more action – men shouted, men dueled, men committed suicide. But the story was much weaker here, and the play fizzled to an end. This was more a product of Shakespeare’s writing than the acting and directing.
But still, Byrne could have done better. Certainly producing a 400-year-old play is no easy task. But considering the Abbey is Ireland’s premiere theater, it should have been capable of doing better justice to the world’s premiere playwright. (JM)