Julius Caesar: 5th Ashland play, Eighth of Summer Season 2011

Last show of the year!

To enter the New Theater, one must pass through a small brick courtyard.  To enter for Julius Caesar, one needed to pass by half a dozen long white banners imprinted with the faces and details of slain leaders of history, from Abraham Lincoln to Czar Nicholas II to Xerxes I.  Inside there are a dozen more banners.  It is an immediate introduction to the play, bringing the audience into the action before the play has even started.  On our way to our seats, we saw one of the lead actors, Gregory Linnington, enter from the vestibule to join his fellow actors who were milling about the stage, greeting each other and people they knew in the stands.

Wendy with some of the Julius Caesar banners.

The show began with instructions from Vilma Silva, playing Julius Caesar, on how to react when her character raised her arms in a certain way.  We were all to go nuts basically, screaming and carrying on as if it were a political rally or sporting event.  Much has been made of the festival's decision to have a female play Caesar but having seen Ms. Silva in previous shows, Amanda was confident it could be done.

Wendy rated the venue a 10 because she really likes the shows in the New Theater.  The seats are really comfy.  She really liked the banner idea because it set the tone for the show.  She also liked seeing Mr. Linnington before the show started.

Wendy had trouble rating the production because she really wanted to rate it higher than a 10 but had to settle for a 10+.  She thinks Mr. Linnington is an amazing actor and that aspiring actors can learn a lot from him just watching his shows.  She also liked the verging on excessive use of blood; any more would have been too much but any less would have been not enough.  She also really liked the audience reaction, especially when they killed Caesar.  Wendy also liked that after Caesar was dead, she kept walking around but was unseen by the characters that were still alive.  The audience could see her but the actors couldn't.

Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood!

Amanda rated the venue a 10 for its immediacy, being the smallest of the three festival theaters with only 350 or so seats.  At one of the matinee actor talks with Gina Daniels, she said that people have been known to come back to this show time and again to see it from each angle to get the full in-the-round experience.

As for the production, Amanda agrees with Wendy's rating of a 10+.  She is convinced that this show is one of the best she has ever seen in her many years of going to theater.  She especially liked the performances by Ms. Silva and Danforth Comins as Marc Antony.  Ms. Silva is a little bitty thing, 5'4" at best, but she strutted around, ordering everyone about with complete control an
d authority.  Mr. Comins's Antony was heartfelt and intense, giving the famous "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech new life and depth of meaning.  Amanda doesn't know whose idea it was for him to stalk the small stage counterclockwise during the speech but it was a brilliant idea.  The murder of Caesar was bloody, violent and awe inspiring.  Many in the audience openly wept.  Kudos to the costume department for creating Caesar's coat that literally dripped copious amounts of blood.  This show is not for the faint of heart.  We heard at the matinee actor talk with the fight director for the show, U. Jonathan Toppo, that they go through about $100 in blood every night.  The murders (Caesar, Cassius, Brutus, Cinna, Casca, really everybody but Antony gets killed) serve the plot but are bloody and immediate.  In most productions, once Caesar is killed we see him again one more time in Brutus's hallucination and that's it until the curtain call.  Not so here, where dead Caesar roams the stage, sitting for a time in the audience, spending some time onstage watching the action, and always marking the newly slain with a handful of grey clay to great effect.  This show will linger in Amanda's mind for years to come.

Next year's plays!