Trump Kills Julius Caesar: Drives Right Batty.
What I want to say has more to do with Director Oskar Eustis, than the weird display of willful ignorance right wingers embarrassingly shouted out last night at the incredible production of Julius Caesar staged by the estimable Public Theater in Central Park.
Let’s start with those protestors and get them out of the way.
I’m imagining this: a coffee house in Brooklyn, several avid readers of right-wing blogs sit sipping complicated coffee and stewing about Shakespeare. So far so good. I mean Shakespeare can get the blood boiling.
Specifically, for the last week or so, the right wing crazysphere has been in a tizzy about the portrayal of Caesar as Trump. Okay, I’m sure Obama fans didn’t like it performed in Minnesota, or Thatcher fans performed in London, or Mussolini fans when Orson Welles did it. DeGaulle fans were most likely pissed off when it was done in Paris, and heck, I bet King Henry the VIII fans had issues with old Will himself when he first did it in 1599.
But what gets my snowflake is this: Sometime during the evening at the coffee house, the righties sat around and decided they would all run on stage and scream “Goebbels would be proud.”
Really? That was the best they could come up with? Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda would be proud?
I understand the deep as a puddle thinking. It’s a bunch of Jews supporting NY theater, so shock them by referring to Goebbels. Yeah, except that doesn’t work. Pretty much everybody in that audience knew their history and knew who Goebbels was, so the shouts mainly caused laughter.
Better luck next time.
The truth is those rightie protestors actually helped create one of the more compelling pieces of political theater I’ve seen in years, and the best Julius Caesar I’ve ever seen.
It felt like Eustis anticipated the rushing of the stage because it fit in perfectly with his production. Cops tackling people and handcuffing them happened twice at the show I attended, and several more times in the production itself, and one blended into the other, until you couldn’t tell what was staged and what was real, and the whole production morphed into a powerful piece of performance art in perfect sync with our agitated times. It rattled me and elevated me, and I walked back across the park with my children totally buzzed at what we had just experienced.
Theater at its best. Potent.
“Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means.
To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him." Oskar Eustis
The centerpiece of this production was the astounding Marc Anthony oration over Caesar’s corpse. Pause for a deep bow to Elizabeth Marvel.
She tore into Friends, Romans, Countrymen, right-wing protestors, ushers, audience members and anybody else who happened to be strolling in the park, and delivered an incredible performance. The staging of her oration, and Corey Stoll’s Brutus speech before it, built to a frenetic crescendo that carried us to the second half of the play.
Pacing often feels off in Julius Caesar as the play plods to the end, but in the confident hands of Eustis, this production built to a brutal ending. With the help of about fifty audience plants, shouts and hecklers screamed at the stage, swarmed the stage in protest, caused outbursts of mayhem and were eventually massacred by cops carrying handguns. The audience was shot by those cops too. Eustice had something to say and somehow managed to not only comment on Trump, but also Black Lives Matter, People Have The Power, Cops, Guns, Racism, Tyranny, and fragility of American democracy. . Some jokes too. Always appreciated. Not bad for a couple of hours work
Sets, lights, sound design, music, all perfect. And the cast superb. Notably, Gregg Henry as Caesar, a badass Cassius, performed by John Douglas Thompson, Corey Stoll, a real and pragmatic Brutus, and as I mentioned, the riveting Elizabeth Marvel as Marc Anthony.
This production was a powerful commentary on our times. Pity the righties didn’t stick around to see it. They might have come up with someone a tad more accurate than Joseph Goebbels.
