"JULIUS CAESAR" Theatre Review - WILL GEER & WILL SHAKESPEARE'S TOGA PARTY

I have a friend named Fred McKinnon who’s a Manhattan playwright. Above his computer, printer, etc. – his work space where the magic takes place, except when Fred is globetrotting, doing research, play hopping at London’s West End or recharging his muse at writers’ colonies from Hawaii to Massachusetts – is a postcard bearing a picture of William ShakespeareShakespeare and the words: “So I haven’t written lately. Neither has Shakespeare.” Perhaps you have to be a scribe to fully appreciate this joke, but this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.

Of course, if you’d written immortal masterpieces such as Julius Caesar, you’d be excused for being a slacker of a pen pal. Unlike modern scribblers such as Fred and your humble and most obedient servant, without benefit of the Internet, word processing, drama format software, etc., the poetic genius from Stratford-upon-Avon rendered classic after classic for the ages, using only a lowly low tech quill, ink and parchment. Yet the angels sang when Shakespeare wrote, and it’s astonishing how many expressions still in use in the English language are derived from the Shakespearean canon.

For example, consider Julius Caesar, which the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum premiered June 6 in its amphitheatre under Malibu’s starry, starry skies. It’s common knowledge that the phrase “et tu, Brutus?”, which has come to epitomize backstabbing (literally!), originated in Shakespeare’s high drama about the low down Roman Empire. But did you know that the term for someone speaking gibberish also wittily began in Caesar, when Casca (Alan Blumenfeld) quipped: “but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.” Caesar’s right hand man, Marc Antony (Aaron Hendry), not Mahatma GandhiMahatma Gandhi, proclaimed: “Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war.” Even that popular populist 1960s exclamation in the affirmative by Black Panthers arguably emanated from this play when, during his funeral oration, Antony cried: “To stir men's blood: I only speak right on.”

But while so many of Shakespeare’s wondrous words are still perennials, it is the syntheses of swordplay and wordplay, rhyme and theme, that makes Julius Caesar as rabblerousing and timely today as it was when it opened at the Globe Theatre in 1599. As the hotheaded Antony wisely observes: “The evil that men do lives after them.” Indeed, 510 years later the plot about plotters conspiring to assassinate the head of the ancient world’s superpower remains resonant. Like the Rome of antiquity, with more than 700 military bases scattered around the world the United States of America has become an empire beset by internal inequities and endless enemies and wars abroad. Using the pretext of 9/11, just as Caesar had 2,044 years before him, George W. BushGeorge W. Bush grabbed unprecedented power, diminishing the role and rule of a representative republican form of governance as he assumed greater omnipotence. Like Caesar awaiting to be crowned absolute dictator of imperial Rome by the senate, Bush’s imperial presidency, unitary executive, warrant-less surveillance, extraordinary rendition, prolonged detention without charges, torture, etc., were the tyranny of a latter day “decider” and would-be emperor.

Julius Caesar opens with the Roman throng feting their conquering hero, who displays blithe hubris and arrogantly disdains portents of disaster. Similarly, that prating prancing preening prick of a president enjoyed widespread approval ratings when the uniform-clad wannabe warrior prematurely proclaimed “mission accomplished” on an aircraft carrier’s deck for a preemptive war we’re still, alas, mired in six years on.

From their 21st century vantage point, audiences may congratulate themselves that unlike Cassius’ cabal, we are too cultivated to settle political disputes at dagger point. On the other hand, our too, too loyal “opposition” caved, with many Democrats voting for the PATRIOT Act, to authorize the invasion of Iraq under false pretences, and supported too many Bush measures. To make matters worse, Bush was reelected and although ultimately repudiated by the electorate, now that he’s out of power our spineless senators decline to charge him with war crimes, etc. Meanwhile, his Antony, Dick CheneyDick Cheney, continues to sow discord with impunity. As Cassius (Melora Marshall) said: “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world, Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about…”

But time will tell who were truly more refined: the Americans, who cowered in the face of despotism, or the Romans who, as Shakespeare’s most famous fictional character, Hamlet, said, “[took] arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end[ed] them“, literally turning their oppressor into a bloodstained quivering mass of orange Julius (played by Carl Palmer). In another half a millennium, history shall pass judgment on who was more civilized.

Caesar’s political overtones befit the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, which was founded after the leftwing cowboy actor (1950’s Broken Arrow and Winchester ’73) refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted. Instead of fading away into obscurity, Geer turned his land in Topanga Canyon near Malibu into an outdoor theatre, where he also grew every plant Shakespeare wrote about. Geer went on to co-star in the 1954 classic made by blacklisted talents about striking Chicano miners, Salt of the Earth, and in the beloved 1970s CBS-TV series The Waltons, playing Grandpa Walton.

Probably the highest compliment I can pay the Theatricum’s production of Julius Caesar is that it’s worthy of the bard. It is, to use Brutus’ (Mike Peebler) words, “a savage spectacle,” with a cast of dozens. Considering that I recently saw the one woman show Kick starring DeLanna Studi and the two-actor drama A Number co-starring John Heard, a cast of 40 is of near epic proportion onstage. Ellen Geer deftly directs the mass scenes, which are somewhat reminiscent of Salt of the Earth. The mise-en-scene of the battle sequences, as sword drawn Roman centurions romp over the bard’s boards, are excitingly well-choreographed, making excellent use of the open air Topanga setting. The slow motion assassination of Caesar is harrowingly cinematic. There’s more blood shed in this play than in a TV episode about those other Italians, The Sopranos.

In the best gender bending acting since Cate BlanchettCate Blanchett played Bob DylanBob Dylan in 2007’s I’m Not There, the production’s most outstanding performance is delivered by Melora Marshall as Cassius. She plays him as an overwrought conspirator, a fanatical devotee of the cause whose own ambition and zeal compels Cassius to take up arms against the man who would be king.

During its summer season, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is presenting three Shakespeare plays, including Cymbeline and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Moliere’s The Miser. Julius Caesar will be performed through Sept. 26 on: Saturdays June 13 and 20 at 8:00 p.m.; Saturdays June 27, August 29, September 12, 19 and 26 at 4:00 p.m.; Sundays July 5, 12, 19, 26, August 2, 9, 16, 23 and September 6 at 7:30 p.m., at: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Southern California. For more information call (310)455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.