Each summer Shakespeare by the Sea tours traditionalist stagings of plays by their eponym throughout the Southland. And while Year 28 will still feature one such show (As You Like It), the other, Julius Caesar, is a “modern-verse translation,” which in this case means making some of the language a little less abstruse to your average 21st-century Anglophone while still sounding, er, passably Shakespearean.
While the result will likely be acceptable to the groundlings, purists will be puzzled as to why director Stephanie Coltrin and company would go this route at all, especially with a play that isn’t particularly hard to follow. The question is whether groundlings or purists are more likely to come out for Shakespeare in the park.
Julius Caesar (Gregory Mason Dodds) has just emerged triumphant from a civil war, and there are some who want him to be emperor. That’s a dicey proposition in a republic — but it sounds damn good to him. Alarmed at his lust for power, some of the senators — chief among them Cassius (Jonathan Fisher) and the honorable Brutus (Brendan Robert Kane) — conspire to assassinate him for the good of Rome. But they underestimate the guile of a couple of Caesar’s relatives, and another civil war ensues.
Although Shakespeare is popularly viewed as some godlike figure incapable of wrong, the Alpha and Omega of the written word, some of his plays are kinda lame, with plotholes galore and plenty of prose that was relatively antiquated by 19th-century standards, never mind today. That said, his genius and artistry are undeniable, and Julius Caesar may be the best overall showcase of his abilities this side of Hamlet, telling a great story with timeless themes and one clever turn of phrase after another.
So why Shakespeare by the Sea wanted to tinker with it I’ll never know. But tinker they have. “I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it” has become “I might as well have monkeys fly out of my ass as tell how it played out,” as if the former is unclear and the latter funny. “Writings” has become “missives,” as if those most likely to benefit from modernizing the language are going to know the word missives.
But as often as not, the alterations are relatively benign. What hurts the overall presentation more is one of Shakespeare by the Sea’s worst habits: piping generic mood music underneath the dialog. While not constant, it’s a continual annoyance, on occasion made worse by bad generic “dramatic” sound cues, such as a silly metallic swoosh to emphasize Marc Antony’s (Caleb Towns) mention of Caesar’s will. “But here’s a parchment with the seal of Caesar; I found it in his closet; it is [dramatic pause] his will.” Swoosh-ping! Oof.
But a couple of the best bits come around this time in the play. As Cassius, Johnathan Fisher (who I loved in last summer’s excellent Henry IV) gets the play’s biggest laugh by the way he questions the wisdom of letting Anthony speak at Caesar’s funeral; and Coltrin has done well to scatter the plebians amongst the audience as they heckle Brutus during his speech.
Overall, the acting and staging are standard-issue Shakespeare by the Sea, competently providing a stylistic glimpse into what the way these plays were performed in the Bard’s time. It’s not today’s state-of-the-art Shakespeare, but whaddya want for free?
A minor irritant is how poorly thought out the gender-swapping is. It’s simply lazy to change the gender of Octavius (Megan Ruble) without changing his name to its female form (Octavia). But while it’s one thing to cast females in male roles — especially when the dramatis personae is almost entirely male — it’s ludicrous to make two of a triumvirate of military commanders female when the play explicitly refers to the patriarchal restrictions of the society in which it takes place. As if to highlight how little sense all of this makes, another male role (Cinna) is played by a woman (Ruble) without changing the character’s gender.
But something for which Shakespeare by the Sea is to be commended is the timeliness of staging Julius Caesar in 2025. Rather than secure their own positions by playing along, some of Caesar’s bosomest buddies were willing to put their lives at hazard to take down their burgeoning autocrat for the greater good. Would that today’s Republican Party were populated by such people!
In Shakespeare by the Sea’s only San Pedro stop this summer, Julius Caesar will be performed 7pm Thursday, June 26, at 22nd Street Park (140 W. 22nd St.). For other locations and performances of this, along with As You Like It (maybe Will’s best comedy), check out shakespearebythesea.org or call (310) 217-7596.