Julius Caesar / Théâtre Gérard Philipe

Julius Caesar

Théâtre Gérard Philipe

15-28 November 2010, 7.30pm Mon-Fri; 6pm Sat; 4pm Sun; no performance Tues.
6-20 euros
In English with French subtitles

***

Produced in partnership with the Centre Dramatique National/Orléans-Loiret-Centre, the American Repertory Theatre stage Shakespeare's great study of tyranny, revolution, and civil war, against a slick dreamscape of 1960s America.  A live jazz band, iconic 60s stage furniture and a set of epic, roman proportions combine to make this ambitious project a highly original, if not consistently convincing, reevaluation of the relationship between the political image and the political word.

French director Arthur Nauzyciel produced this play specifically for French audiences, the vast majority of whom, at least in part, rely on the French subtitles displayed above the stage.  It is therefore understandable that the pace at times seems slow and particular lines rather laboured, enunciated to an awkward degree for those familiar with Shakespeare's work.  The actors are successful in allowing for the greatest possible degree of first-hand understanding for non-native speakers, and thus convey well the cadence of the play's original language, whilst synchronising the words spoken on the stage with those appearing above it.  However, key relationships between characters suffer as lines are often delivered straight out to the audience, the actors staring into the middle distance rather than at each other.  Most notably the early dialogues between Cassius and Brutus ( Mark L. Montgomery and James Waterson), fail to create a sense of intimacy between the two conspirators.

The production draws its energy from the play's most iconic scenes; Caesar's assassination at the Capitol (Act 3, scene 1) and Mark Antony's oration beginning "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears".  As Caesar (Thomas Derrah) lies murdered before them, Nauzyciel has his players literally enact Brutus' instructions to "Stoop, Romans, stoop/And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood/Up to the elbows", creating a most disturbing tableau of sharply suited men dripping blood on to the Senate floor.  However, the strength of the production's references to 1960s America spring not from this implicit allusion to the Kennedy assassination, but rather from the staging of Antony's funeral speech, that great icon of rhetoric.  Stood beneath a huge overhead microphone, Daniel Pettrow masterfully plays with Shakespeare's slippery verse, flinging rhetorical questions out to the full auditorium before him and the empty one seen behind him; and is answered with the sound of the people's swelling rage, piped around the theatre.  Waterson prowls around the periphery of the stage, watching on as his rival's consummate skill as a politician and rhetorician turns from positive spin to implicit damnation as Pettrow systematically inverts the meaning of the very language of politics.  In the first act of the play, Brutus says of self-knowledge and of image "the eye sees not itself,/But by reflection, by some other things"; and it is Antony's rhetoric which ultimately dictates how Rome sees Brutus and through this how Rome sees itself, "You all did love him once, not without cause:/What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?"  That the audience looks on to a mirror image of their own empty seats during this scene, serves as a reminder of one's own susceptibility to the power of the spoken word, that in the world of high politics each countryman is a mere pawn to stylised manipulation.

The main problem with the production is Nauzyciel's preoccupation with Lucius, Brutus' trusted servant boy, who is allocated 24 short lines in Shakespeare's play but here is played by Jared Craig as a transcendental, death and dumb spectator of Roman political folly, artificially planted into several climactic scenes.  Nauzyciel uses the character of Lucius as an embodiment of innocence and the political naivety of Brutus; when the latter lays down to die, his servant mirrors his actions in an effective inversion of filmic representation of the parting of the soul and the body in death.  But his presence, dressed in an infantile superman t-shirt and gold sparkly cape, on the battlefields is ridiculous and undermines the gravitas of the conspirators' death scenes.  The character of Lucius is indeed intended to reveal the humanity of Brutus, for when the boy falls asleep over his instrument Shakespeare has Brutus say "It is no matter:/Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber"; it is unnecessary to use his character as an artificial avatar of such subtleties.

Overall, a very enjoyable, if flawed, production, with an outstanding performance from Daniel Pettrow.

Interiors / Théâtre des Abbesses



Interiors

Théâtre des Abbesses
2-6 November 2010
8.30pm everyday + 3pm matinee Sat.
13-24 euros
In English with French subtitles

**

In Matthew Lenton's award-winning production of Maurice Maeterlinck's 1895 drama Intérieur the audience watches a family meal through huge panes of glass front of stage; the metaphoric fourth wall is physically constructed and effectively divides "us" and "them", the public and the not-so private.  The domestic situation is familiar, the voyeuristic perspective afforded by the beautiful, expressionistic set disturbing.  We cannot hear what the characters say but their conversation and their private thoughts are relayed to us by an anonymous, omnipotent narrator (Elspeth Brodie).

In Maeterlinck's original, the audience watches through a window as the family within is informed of the death of one of their daughters.  The horror of death is concentrated by the petri dish proportions of the spectators to the spectated as the audience helplessly watch a scene of cosy domestic happiness slide into the chaos of despair.  In Lenton's interpretation, no tidings of death are brought to the family and the production instead focuses on the banal minutiae of family life; petty jealousies, boredoms, secret sexual longings, and hidden resentments.  We watch the characters tell jokes, dance, flirt and argue; the group splinters and reforms.  Although the observations on family politics are not particularly original, nor profound, they are portrayed well in a sustained and impressive piece of ensemble mime (Lenton's Vanishing Point company was awarded the Best Ensemble Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland in 2009).  Lenton makes reference to Maeterlinck's preoccupation with death in the closing lines of the play where he has his narrator, rather artlessly, list the wheres, whens and hows of each characters' death over the next couple of decades.  It is fairly clear what Lenton is getting at; instead of employing puppets to represent fate's complete control over man, as Maeterlinck did, Lenton instead uses a big-brother style voice over to lay bare the futility of each character's actions.  The final revelation of the characters' future demises completely undercuts their striving for self-determination; the interactions we have witnessed are made to seem fleeting and poignantly human.

However, considering the pedigree of all those involved in the staging of Interiors (a co-production with Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Mercadante Teatro Stabile di Napoli and Traverse Theatre in association with Lyric Hammersmith and Tron Theatre) I failed to find the play compelling in its subject nor innovative in its execution.  The concept of a omniscient voice-over articulating the private thoughts of those assembled around the dinner table is not particularly original, the reference to contemporary Big Brother culture obvious and rather laboured.  It was quite funny; it was a bit like a skit on your average TV sketch show, except it went on for an hour and a half.  By the closing lines of the play, the dead girl's narration descends into such cringeworthy sentimentality that the play's real strength of portraying quotidian family life with accurate and entertaining realism is unfortunately undermined.  One is left with a frustrated sense that the rich potential offered by Maeterlinck's original has  not been successfully exploited, neither thematically nor stylistically; indeed, that the link between Interiors and Intérieur is actually rather tenuous, more a shared stage set than a coherent set of philosophical ideas and questions.