I was tickled by the Observer's recent, inadvertent description of a malt whisky as "a genuine classic which never fails to disappoint". I've always felt that Julius Caesar was a bit like that: rarely living up to its advance billing as Shakespeare's most sophisticated political thriller. But Lucy Bailey's production, much improved since its Stratford debut 18 months ago, now makes a good case for the play and strikes the right balance between the visceral and intellectual.
Clearly owing a debt to the BBC/HBO series Rome and to Tom Holland's Rubicon, Bailey presents us with a city addicted to violence. In an extra-textual prologue, Romulus and Remus fight to the death under an image of the she-wolf of Rome. The city streets are filled with panic and orgiastic brutality. And the assassination itself is a messy, prolonged affair in which Caesar turns on his attackers before ending in a pool of blood. William Dudley's design, which uses video images of smoking buildings and projects multiplying figures on to six pivoting screens, also helps to destroy the standard idea of Rome as a place of pristine marble and spotless togas.
But whereas the visual effects initially dominated the production, Bailey now pays more attention to character; and the revelation to me, through the excellent performances of Sam Troughton and Greg Hicks, is the extent to which Brutus and Caesar are mirror images of each other. Both are wreathed in an obstinate self-regard, both make fatal tactical decisions and both are faintly dismissive of their marginalised wives: for once, I found myself believing the rumour that Brutus was Caesar's love-child. Troughton, in particular, has acquired the impermeable arrogance of the idealist, and Hicks gives copious hints of Caesar's tyrannical potential: best of all is his look of triumphal smugness when Decius persuades him to attend the Senate by announcing that a crown is on the agenda.
Darrell D'Silva has also enriched his portrait of Mark Antony as a beefy boozer by suggesting that he actively relishes the slippery rhetoric by which he manages to win over the Roman people. And John Mackay's Cassius, ostentatiously cold-shouldered by Caesar, accurately catches the character's mix of rancorous envy and intellectual clear-headedness. Just occasionally, Bailey over-eggs the pudding: the return of Caesar's ghost as an avenging spirit in the battle scenes makes over-explicit what is already apparent in the text. But the play maintains its momentum in the second half, and the idea of Rome as a city of thuggery and superstition is balanced by the cerebral debate about the morality of murder. For once, I felt Julius Caesar was a classic that didn't disappoint.
