Theatre reviews: Julius Caesar | Positive Stories
Julius Caesar, Botanic Gardens, Glasgow ****
Positive Stories, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ****
In a week when some of the 21st century’s most vicious dogs of war have been baring their teeth, Shakespeare’s mighty tragedy Julius Caesar has some extraordinary resonances, plucked straight from the nightly TV news. In modern dress, and with many of the leading characters – Cassia, Antonia, Octavia – unfussily played as women, Jennifer Dick’s 11-strong Bard in the Botanics company throw themselves instantly into the heart of the drama, as James Boal’s handsome and evidently self-admiring Caesar, a hugely charismatic and popular leader, returns triumphant from war.
Enter Adam Donaldson’s troubled and slightly stilted Brutus – a kind of Keir Starmer with noble principles – and his angrier ally Cassia, played with tremendous panache by Claire Macallister. Both are convinced Roman republicans, outraged by the idea that Caesar may be crowned king; but any student of politics can see the storm clouds gathering, as they try to pit the abstract principles of liberty, equality and republicanism against the raw popular appeal of Caesar’s victorious legacy, and the passionate loyalty of his friend and protege Antonia, superbly played by Stephanie Macgregor as a kind of Nadine Dorries with brains, guile and courage, who allies with Caesar’s niece Octavia to make war on the conspirators, and install Octavia as Empress.
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Hide AdIn setting out this eerily familiar scenario, Dick’s production offers us a brilliant and gripping 80-minute first act, up to the moment of Antonia’s famous speech at Caesar’s funeral; and a key element of that success lies in the company’s terrific collective presence as the mob, suddenly appearing among the audience, hailing their heroes with familiar football chants, and vulnerable to immediate emotional persuasion from one view to another.
The show’s 40 minute second half, by contrast, is too short and heavily cut to do justice to the conflict that follows; and the action rushes to a conclusion at a pace that leaves the audience more short-changed than short of breath. Yet still, the collective shiver of recognition at Antonia’s wily populist demagoguery is unforgettable. “I am no orator,” she says, contrasting herself to Brutus, the expert in civics and democracy. “I only speak right on” – in other words, I tell it like it is. And those who haven’t heard something like that, in recent global politics, simply haven’t been listening.
If Julius Caesar is one of the great tragedies, the Traverse Theatre this weekend took a different approach, staging a festival to celebrate the third season of Positive Stories For Negative Times, the brilliant youth theatre project created during lockdown by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse of the Glasgow company Wonder Fools.
The project involves working with the Traverse to commission short plays from major writers for performance by young theatre groups; and even in its first season, in 2020, it reached more than 2,700 young people, both in Scotland, and as far afield as Madrid, Stockholm and Quebec.This summer in Scotland, Positive Stories (3) is staging four festivals, in Edinburgh, Ayr, Inverness and Perth, featuring new work by four writers, Tim Crouch, Robert Softley Gale, Leyla Josephine and Sarah Shaarawi.
This weekend, at the Traverse, young actors from the Mill Theatre Group in East Linton performed Sarah Shaarawi’s The Day The Stampers United, a vividly choreographed 30 minute fantasy about a rare moment of working-class rebellion in a delivery warehouse; and if the bright and challenging energy of that show is any guide, this round of Positive Stories festivals will offer a summer of rich theatrical experience across Scotland, both for those on stage, and for those of us in the audience.
Julius Caesar is at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until 8 July. Positive Stories For Negative Times is at Ayr Gaiety Theatre, 1-2 July, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 8-9 July, and Perth Theatre 14-16 July.