JULIUS CAESAR

 

 

 

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. 

Directed and designed by Peter Evans. Associate Director Jennifer Tovey. Costume designer Simone Romaniuk. Lighting designer Amelia Lever-Davidson. Composer and sound designer Madeleine Picard. Fight and Movement Director Tim Dashwood. Voice Director Jack Starkey-Gill. Cast: Leon Ford. Jules Billington. Peter Carroll. Septimus Caton. Ray Chong Nee. James Lugton. Ava Madon. Ruby Maishman. Gareth Reeves. Mark Leonard Winter. Brigid Zengeni. Understudies Olivia Ayoub and Oliver Crawford. Bell Shakespeare. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre Centre. April 11-19 2026 Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au  or 62752700

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Brigid Zengeni (Brutus), Septimus Caton (Caesar), Peter Carroll (Casca)

 

With his hands bathed in Caesar’s blood, Cassius makes a prophetic declaration – “How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er in states unborn and accents yet unknown. It is an inescapable truth in our own time when attempts have been made on a president’s life and one state has systematically engineered assassinations within an enemy state. In Shakespeare’s version of the events of 44 BC the assassination occurs within the Senate and by Caesar’s own political cohort driven to prevent the  ambitious grasp for kingship.   

 

Brutus (Brigid Zengeni) and Cassius (Leon Ford)

 

Bell Shakespeare’s production could not be more timely nor more propitious. It is because of this that a contemporary audience, gripped by this thrilling performance is able to accept director Peter Evans’s set design of an Italian Mediterranean setting with a Cinzano Umbrella and palm. It is why costume designer Simone Romaniuk has given a supercilious and arrogant Caesar (Septimus Caton) celebrity status with a pristine white suit and his trophy wife Calpurnia (a plunging necklined white Romanesque gown. 

 

Jules Billington (Portia), Brigid Zengeni (Brutus)

Ancient Rome merges with modern day Italy to bring a striking sense of historical inevitability to a fiercely relevant production of Shakespeare’s political philosophy. By placing the play within recent times, we are readily able to accept the lesbian marriage between Brutus (Brigid Zengeni) and Portia (Jules Billington) or the casting of Ruby Maishman as Cinna the Senator. From the opening address to the audience by Billington, dressed in the black robe of the Soothsayer and subsequent action in the audience, the fourth wall is broken and the story unfolds with riveting force. 

Peter Carroll and Leon Ford in Julius Caesar

 Director Evans has distilled Shakespeare’s sweeping tale of murder and revenge into a tightly constructed drama that illuminates motive over spectacle. The cast is reduced to an ensemble of ten actors who double up in varying degrees in minor roles. Ultimately, the play portrays the battle of conflicting motivations, of selfish intent, noble aspiration and loyal devotion. The opposing triumvirate of Brutus, Cassius and Marc Antony (Mark Leonard Winter) feeds Shakespeare’s prophetic warning. Evans’ casting is brilliant. Caesar warns us of Cassius’s dangerous “lean and hungry look” but Leon Ford’s performance is far more incisive than a superficial assessment. His argument to Brutus as to why Caesar must die erupts from deep-seated envy and bitter resentment. Where Zengeni’s Brutus is noble in sentiment and purpose, Ford’s Cassius reveals deep seated loathing. It is his psychotic nature that makes him dangerous, not  his physical leanness. Ford’s performance rises with steely resolve in the lead up to the assassination, only to be hurled down by Cassisus’s vulnerability and moral weakness. His performance is in sharp contrast to Zengeni’s which is no less forceful. Cassius’s manipulative guile is matched by Brutus’s honourable, though misguided motive. Zengeni persuades us to believe that Marc Antony’s acknowledgement of the ‘noblest Roman of them all” is warranted and we are bound as much by Shakespeare’s text as by Zengeni’s performance to evoke empathy for her situation. 

Brigid Zengeni (Brutus), Ava Madon (Calpurnia), Septimus Caton (Caesar)

 

Shakespeare’s dramatic structure is not fleshed out and the scenes after the assassination tend to be more functional, driving the action to the inevitable conclusion. However, the confrontation between Brutus and Cassius at the field of Philippi is an example of tour de force acting by Zengeni and Ford. As Marc Antony, Mark Leonard Winter gives a highly idiosyncratic performance. His phrasing is often erratic in its pausation and forceful enunciation. There is a certain artificiality and insincerity in his delivery which emphasizes his mastery of manipulative rhetoric. He speaks with a modern voice, articulate and accessible. From the moment Leonard Winter cries out “Let slip the dogs of war” we see an Antony consumed by grief and propelled by revenge. Winter’s oration at the Forum, so purposefully manipulated, presents an Antony more cunning and more adept at rhetoric than I have seen in previous productions. It is a performance that at times puzzles in its invention and then expounds with dazzling clarity so that we can believe his human charity over Brutus’s body.

Mark Leonard Winter as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar

 

There is strong support from the cast. Veteran actor Peter Carroll extracts every ounce of droll humour from Casca. Caton is a statuesque Caesar, obsessed with power and yet generous towards his citizens, unless his will is but a fabrication, a most cunning device by Antony. Madon’s Calpurnia and Billington’s Portia make the most of each other’s single scene to capture Calpurnia’s subservience and Portia’s fragile insecurity. Evans with the assistance of composer and sound designer Madeleine Picard keep the tension rising to the climax before interval, but this tends to dissipate in the scene between Antony, Octavius (Ruby Maishman) and Lepidus (Ray Chong Nee) and the presence of Caesar’s ghostly voice-over offered an eerie tone without the threat of doom that should accompany it.

Bell Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar takes a microscope to human motive. In a world where fake news, social media and war and distrust intrude upon our lives, Shakespeare’s genius is Soothsayer to society. Evans and his creative team and cast have staged a Julius Caesar that is dramatically powerful and auspiciously relevant. It “holds as “twere the mirror up to Nature” and leaves us to judge. Don’t miss it.

Photographs by Brett Boardmann