U.S. Politics Unequal to ‘Julius Caesar’

Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” can be many things, but the maiden production of the Quantum Theatre Company at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center clearly indicates that the rise and fall of this Caesar can’t be turned into a good old hustings campaign, American-style.

That’s the concept here, and given the news these days, it was probably irresistible. What better, during a presidential election season and with the media spotlight on the party conventions, than a re-imagining of the political power plays of “Julius Caesar” in terms of our CNN era? One might imagine George W. or Al Gore losing a closely fought contest and speculating that either candidate’s allies would, like Cassius, grow awfully bitter.

Besides, Shakespeare--whose play texts never tell a director what exactly to do--is always open to re-imagining, and directors have been for a long time happily jumping at the opportunity. The question is whether the concept by director Tiger Reel, also credited with “adaptation,” actually makes any sense.

The overall view here is that American politics, like the Roman kind, could become blood sport, and that the handiwork of yesterday’s lone assassins could become that of tomorrow’s senatorial party leaders. What Reel’s depiction suggests, for example, is the equivalent of GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi being swayed by his fellow Republicans to join in a group murder of Gore on the floor of the Senate. (Or, for a triumphant Bush, reverse the parties.) Lott, in this case, would be Brutus (Michael Ordona) and political junkies might have fun figuring out who Cassius (Eric Baldwin) might be, or fellow conspirator Casca (played by David Rutter like a drawling Southerner).

Reel’s staging can also elicit a bit of amusement at such sights as video reports in care of RNN--the Roman News Network--and Caesar (Thomas Craig Elliott), Brutus or Marc Antony (Aaron Mendelson) delivering their speeches not to the responsive hoi polloi of traditional stagings but to a press horde. And this is where this show’s pointed barbs turn into unintended comedy.

Such crucial scenes as Antony’s adroit ability to sway the crowd from cheering to jeering Brutus’ explanation of why Caesar had to die are rendered nearly nonsensical here: Shakespeare’s ironic point is that the crowd in the street is fickle, easily manipulated by oratory, just as likely to applaud the death of a leader as to cheer that same leader days earlier. (It could also be strongly argued, based only on viewings of the recent conventions, that classic speechmaking of Antony’s sort is extinct and not possible now.) The spectacle we have here is of a press corps openly weeping and calling out for “Treason!”

If this isn’t ludicrous to a fault, then the tragedy’s denouement on the Philippi battlefields, where Antony’s triumvirate destroys Brutus’ rebels, pushes this show’s American theme past the breaking point. Again, it would be as if Lott had decided to lead an armed force against new President Joseph I. Lieberman, who, of course, would don a uniform and lead the U.S. federal troops in the field.

All of this gets terribly in the way of what remains a glorious work in which partisan battles, bickering between allies and how men of power actually live domestically are elegantly woven into a rich, dramatic fabric. Ordona, more than most of the cast remembering that this is Shakespeare, delivers the poetry and expresses a good man’s torn allegiances.

It isn’t so much his doing, but Elliott’s Caesar is rendered here as such a slight, superficial man-in-a-suit that it’s hard to grasp Cassius’ claim that he “strides the world like a Colossus,” such a threat that only assassination will do.

BE THERE

“Julius Caesar,” Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 17. (818) 755-8850. $10-$12. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.