RSC LIVE 2017- JULIUS CAESAR (REVIEW): When William Returned

LIVE PERFORMANCE

VIEWED IN CINEMA

DATE: 26th APRIL 2017

BY: THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

LOCATION: ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON



If you go to the theatre today you run the risk of hearing the political views of directors and actors, and being subjected to their embarrassingly blue pilled juvenile squarkings about nationalism, Donald Trump, or anything that doesn’t conform to PC, consensus leftist ideology.

Such was the case with this production of Julius Caesar, which was largely very good, but (predictably) tainted at the beginning with a short interview with some of the cast members. So, what did the lefty twits say? Did they call Donald Trump Hitler? Did they call Brexit voters Hitler? Did they call my brother’s dog Hitler? Well, no Hitler references this time, but they had a good old SJW whinge anyway.

Okay, so here’s the bit where you slap your forehead, and endure the pearls of 'wisdom' dropped from the lefty luvvies at the RSC.

Hail Caesar/Trump/Hitler (same thing, isn't it?)

Democratically elected businessman Donald Trump, a man who appears to be playing along with the globalists agenda just like Obama before him, is a potential dictator who probably needs to be assassinated, just like Julius Caesar in the play. Yeah, they went there. Oh, and the role of females in this play was vital (it wasn’t) because Shakespeare gave all of the best lines to the female characters (he didn’t) and if women had ran Rome all of the horrible events that transpire during the play probably wouldn't have happened.

Oh man, the idiocy is strong in the theatre, a strange land of oestrogen empowered make believe where actors and directors see patriarchal dictators everywhere, yet are completely unable to see their own Marxist indoctrinated faces that stare back at themselves in the mirror.

But onto the play, which was very good, and written by a guy who was a bit of a genius, and not a drippy leftist, who would no doubt have been commissioned to write the play if it was created anew today.

The plot is simple, easy to follow, and I can see why it is one of the Shakespeare plays taught in UK schools. A very popular Julius Caesar is returning from another military triumph, and the plebeians of Rome (the ancient equivalent of the voting masses) are demanding he be made an emperor, and given dictatorial powers. The Roman plebeians are unanimous in their passionate devotion towards Caesar by the way, they all love him, so the parallels with nationalist figures like Donald Trump (who are massively divisive) is completely off. Trump built hotels, not battlefields of corpses. He was a businessman, not a soldier. If you want a more accurate parallel with Caesar I'd suggest you look at Oliver Cromwell, and the aftermath of the English Civil War, and for modern parallels of military might and dictatorships look to Erdogan in Turkey, because that situation is ongoing right now.

But, back to the plot.

Caesar is considered too popular/ambitious by a group of conspirators that are close to him, and so they bump him off, speeches happen, the plebeians change their mind, then back again, and the play concludes with the conspirators losing a battle and doing what good Roman soldiers always do when they lose a war.

James Corrigan excels as Mark Antony.

Julius Caesar is all about the speeches given by powerful political figures, and their attempts to manipulate the roman plebians. The most memorable of these speeches is the rhetorical masterclass given by Mark Antony (James Corrigan) as he demonstrates that his rival Brutus (Alex Waldmann) is not all that he claims, repeatedly referring to him as honourable, whilst illustrating that by his very actions he is anything but. The speech is further enhanced by the orator’s claims that he is not very good at speeches, that he’s just a bumbling fool who cannot manipulate with words, and is a simple man who just tells it like it is.

Potential politicians should take note, this is how you do it, this is how you turn a potentially hostile crowd onto your way of thinking, whilst acting like all you are doing is speaking unvarnished truth. And no, this has no parallels with Trump either, sorry libs, it just doesn't. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and his powers of rhetorical speech are certainly not at the level of Mark Antony. If you want to know the cause, look in that most painful of implements, a mirror.

I want to make a couple of notes about the individual performances and staging, as I saw the production with my mother, and as she has seen (and studied) the play before, her observations hold more weight than my own.

Mum felt that the actor playing Brutus lacked presence, power and charisma, and that his uninspiring performance detracted from the play. I saw the character as weak and wishy-washy, and apparently that’s not what they were going for, so that was a problem. Mum also felt that the scenes with the plebeians were lacking in personal. The speakers talked of large crowds in Rome, and what we saw was ten people shuffling around the stage, so that was a bit off.

Speaking for myself I very much enjoyed the performance of Martin Hutson as Cassius. There was a very human sense of complexity to the motivational drivers behind his actions, and my mother and I were left debating those motivations long into the night. I felt him to be the most fascinating character on stage, the most believably human, and certainly the most memorable. Special mention also goes to the booming voice of Andrew Woodall’s Caesar, and the subtle notes of insecurity in his performance of a man not quite as physically robust as he would like to be for an individual in such a high status position of social elevation.

Martin Hutson's compellingly complex Cassius

It’s always a good time when the main man Shakespeare is in town, and such was the case with this latest production from the RSC. Okay, so you have to deal with the blue pill guzzling actors, directors, audience members, and everybody else involved in it all, but at the core of the experience there is always going to be William Shakespeare.

The social justice, open borders, sovereignty hating, feminised libtards, who control the theatre industry can moan and complain about the rejection of their lefty agenda as much as they want, but what they think doesn’t really matter. What matters is the original Shakespearean text, and when they stick to it (as they did in this production) the words of the master easily transcend childish attempts from contemporary liberals to use the bard as weaponised propaganda against their ideological enemies.

William Shakespeare will, of course, endure long after the current era of regressive insanity fades away to dust, buried in the Highgate cemetery of silly bearded, dangerously wrong ideas. That’s a certainty, and it makes me smile. I always get something out of watching Shakespeare, not from the actors, it’s the words that matter, and when they stick to the words, I’m more than happy to spend a night with the liberals. The RSC began tonight’s performance with words from their actors, and then the master took over, his words revealing truth beyond the narrow political ideological squarkings of our time. Leftist insanity disappeared when William returned, ideas flourished, minds were stimulated, and all was RIGHT with the world again.


Rating: 8/10 (Superior performances from Martin Hutson & James Corrigan, but the star of the show, as always, was Shakespeare himself)