Trump is in the air as Bell Shakespeare brings Julius Caesar to Melbourne
In an of-the-minute production of Julius Caesar staged last year in New York, the tyrant wore a red tie and was married to a woman with a Slovenian accent. There was no mistaking the spectre of Trump.
When Bell Shakespeare brings the Bard's tale of political corruption and assassination to Melbourne next week, there will be no specific Trump references. But Trumpism hangs in the air.
"It's not a strictly defined world, but I'm a bit obsessed with dystopias at the moment," says director James Evans. "What I'm particularly interested in is how something that seems so outlandish just becomes the new normal. For example, the US government separating parents from their children at the border. Tyranny is creeping; that's the message of this play."
This touring production, set in a post-apocalyptic future of an unnamed country, stars Sydney-based African-American actor Kenneth Ransom as Caesar and Ivan Donato as his conflicted killer, Brutus.
There is much cross-racial and cross-gender casting because Shakespeare "is not interested in accurate portrayals of history", Evans says. "He's interested in human beings."
Twenty-eight theatres across Australia will host the show over the next five months, with a trim band of 10 actors playing 20-odd roles and five support crew travelling with them.
The company chose to program Julius Caesar because of the current lurch to the political right in many countries including the US, says Evans, just as Shakespeare was responding to the political intrigue and suspicion of Elizabethan London during the lurch from Catholicism to the Church of England.
The language shows how leaders are susceptible to flattery. The conspirator Decius (Russell Smith) uses flattery and fake promises of a crown to lure Caesar away to the Senate, and his dissembling and misuse of language feels eerily contemporary. Cassius, played by Nick Simpson-Deeks, persuades Brutus to kill Caesar by telling him a hokey story about a swimming race that casts doubt on Caesar's strength. The thirsty mob later murders Cinna, a poet, continuing to attack him even when they realise they have mistaken him for another man.
"The first person to be killed under the new regime is an artist," Evans says. "I think that's pretty profound."
Evans and Ransom agree that Shakespeare allows for doubt about whether Caesar had the makings of a tyrant.
"That's the central question of the play, and the assassination is a pre-emptive strike," Evans says. "Brutus decides to kill Caesar just in case he might become a tyrant. There's no particular evidence to show he will, but perhaps he will."
"People ask me if he's a tyrant or a hero," Ransom says. "Well, he's a bit of both. He was a military genius, able to defeat Pompey with a lesser army in the civil war.
"It takes a certain type of personality ... to be able to move up the ladder and get rid of all the obstacles and all the people that don't want you there."
Another aspect of Caesar's personality that Ransom is struggling with is his misogyny. During rehearsals, Evans directs Ransom to demonstrate Caesar's disdain for his young wife Calphurnia (Emily Havea) by requesting his robe, then walking away before she has a chance to fetch the garment. There is a suggestion that Caesar blamed his wife for failing to produce a male heir, but Ransom says he doesn't yet fully agree with Evans' take on the relationship.
"I'm still fighting for a little bit of a decent marriage," he says. "He embarrasses her in the first scene because she's barren. But yeah, he is an arrogant, misogynist arsehole.
"I have trouble with the sexism. I keep trying to bring Caesar to me. I don't think of myself as sexist, but I'm sure I have been sexist on occasion. I'm human. But I think there is a degree of sexism – a la Trump again, the way he treats Melania."
"Obviously actors want their characters to come off looking nicer," Evans counters, "but directors have an overview of the production. Caesar is arrogant, he's a narcissist. He calls himself a god at one point."
Of the outrage that followed the New York Public Theatre's depiction of Trump as Caesar last year, Evans says critics most likely "deliberately" misread the play's anti-violence intention.
"They miss the point: if you murder Caesar – read, if you murder Trump – you unleash much worse than you had before."
Julius Caesar is at the Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, July 18-28.