- Female Version Of Caesar Nero
- Female Version Of Caesar No Fear Shakespeare
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Her other Broadway credits include Jez Butterworth’s The River, opposite Hugh Jackman, and the role of Marc Antony in an all-female version of Julius Caesar, directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Caesar, who is so perceptive in his analysis of Cassius, cannot always look 'quite through the deeds' of a calculating deceiver. From his first appearance, Caesar openly displays a superstitious nature, but also from the beginning he displays a propensity to ignore warnings and signs that should alert a. The first Phyllida Lloyd's trilogy of all-female Shakespeare productions at the Donmar (alongside Henry IV and The Tempest), the filmed version of Julius Caesar is released on DVD by Opus Arte. The DVD is in NTSC format and region-free for worldwide distribution and compatibility, and it looks and sounds impressive, the image clear and well-lit. Phyllida Lloyd’s final instalment of the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy concludes with an all-female version of The Tempest starring Harriet Walter as Prospero. This captivating reimagining explores themes of freedom and justice in the context of a women’s prison, with.
2012 | Broadway/Drama | 1:56 | English
Info
Phyllida Lloyd’s groundbreaking all-female version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar stars leading actress Harriet Walter as Brutus, a person wrestling with his moral conscience over the murder of Julius Caesar. It was originally staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Set in a women’s prison, the play is far removed from the traditional Roman setting of Shakespeare’s play. As the women perform, it becomes a play within a play. Frances Barber as Caesar is a vicious tyrant sporting a beret and leather trench coat. When Caesar become overly aggressive, Brutus leads the charge to assassinate him. Instead of stabbing him in the back, Caesar is choked with bleach. Yes, it’s weird, but that’s the point of this version of the play. By staging the play in a women’s prison, Lloyd provides a potent metaphor for the prisoners’ pent-up rage. As the assassination of Caesar was violent, so is violence the imprisoned women encounter. The result becomes a play more like Marat/Sade than William Shakespeare. Lloyd intersperses a few rock and heavy metal numbers to unsettle the audience. It’s all part of Lloyd’s attempt to be witty, liberating, and anti-authoritarian. And she succeeds… brilliantly!
Cast
Frances Barber (Julius Caesar) / Harriet Walter (Brutus) / Jade Anouka (Mark Antony)
Why Stream This Play?
This is a Julius Caesar production like you’ve never seen before. If you’re into something daring, innovative, shocking, and even unnerving, then this show is absolutely, unequivocally for you.
Accolades
- The play was designated a New York Times Critic’s Pick
It is one thing to have an ingenious concept, another to carry it out. Lloyd’s production proves that female actors can bring a fresh perspective to traditionally male roles. The stripped-down stage is resourcefully used and, above all, the production feels powerfully motivated: you feel these imprisoned women are impelled to present a play that deals with violence, conflict and the urge to overthrow any form of imposed authority.
A women’s touch has not softened the hard and mighty JULIUS CAESAR. On the contrary, the gripping, all-female, London-born production has a muscular strength and ferocity guaranteed to keep everyone in the theater in sustained fight-or-flight mode. This cast speaks Shakespeare with a fiery fluency that allows you to understand not just every word but every intention behind the words as well.
Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female JULIUS CAESAR is extraordinarily bold. It’s not just the casting that makes it feel daring; there’s also a crazed, percussive intensity. The production abounds with weirdness, thuggery and horror.
Death of a Salesman
This superb video rendition is noteworthy in that it reunites the original leads, Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock…
read morePHYLLIDA LLOYD, a theatre and film director, is nothing if not eclectic. “Mamma Mia!”, a jolly film about mature but still tuneful hippies, and “The Iron Lady”, a poignant look at Margaret Thatcher in decline, have little in common besides Meryl Streep as the leading lady and Ms Lloyd in the director’s seat. Ms Lloyd is better known for her many operas and plays. Her latest production—an all-female version of “Julius Caesar” at the Donmar Warehouse in London—opens up new country.
Female Version Of Caesar Nero
Gender-bending is in vogue on the London stage these days. Ms Lloyd’s previous women-only Shakespeare play was “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Globe theatre in 2003; Mark Rylance is currently playing Olivia in “Twelfth Night” at the Apollo theatre, and an all-male version of “A Clockwork Orange” is on at the Soho theatre. But this adaptation faces a different challenge. “Julius Caesar” is one of Shakespeare’s most violent plays, yet the drama—set in a bleak, modern-day prison, where inmates are rehearsing the play—is delivered entirely through female voice and movement. For the most part, it works. Physical energy abounds. Caesar is plausibly stabbed. The action-laden crowd scenes are effectively choreographed and genuinely menacing.
This success is down to three actors in particular. Frances Barber’s portrayal of Caesar, in leather coat and beret, as a modern-day sociopath is two parts Idi Amin to one part Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus. Programme notes by Robert Harris, a historical novelist, make clear that this Caesar is not a heroic warrior-patriot brought down by ignoble curs but a war criminal who has wiped out hundreds of thousands of people and threatens to grind Rome under his sandal. Ms Barber spits menace and sadism, forcing a doughnut down a senator’s throat, refusing mercy to a prominent Roman exile. Her gravelly “Et tu, Brute?” at the last failed to move, but then it probably was not meant to.
Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus is stark and angular, with short hair gelled back and severe cheekbones. She starts slowly, but she steadily gains in stature, pushing her anguished way through the consequences of her principled decision to bring down the Caesar she loved for the good of Rome. By the end, Brutus is the unrivalled heart of the action, sobbing at the corner of the stage as the Rome he knew is destroyed. He is the most convincingly realised of Shakespeare’s characters.
Jenny Jules playing Cassius, a conspirator against Caesar, gives the third believable performance. She is not precisely lean and hungry, but her passion and vehemence are persuasive, and she displays an amazing six-pack. Less convincing is Cush Jumbo as Mark Antony, who tips into girlishness when she weeps next to Caesar’s corpse and never quite commands the stage. Curiously, Clare Dunne, who plays both a gun-toting, IRA-style Octavius and Brutus’s wife, Portia, expatiating on the diminished role of women, was better as the man.
Ms Lloyd has said that she chose an all-female cast in part because Shakespeare wrote too few good roles for women (and they were played by men in his day anyway). But stripped to their essence—ambition, greed, love—most of Shakespeare’s characters are surprisingly gender-neutral. More problematic was the setting and some of the raucous, giddy-making special effects.
Modern adaptations often displace Shakespeare’s plays and there is sense in setting “Julius Caesar” in a prison. Ms Lloyd juxtaposes Rome’s looming loss of freedom under Caesar with the plight of the inmates confined to the stripped-down, grey set. Online roulette no download. Power relations in prison are important, as they were around Caesar. Mob rule is a menace, and the temper of crowds inside or out of prison can change quickly. Occasionally prison talk that cuts through the Shakespearean verse (such as when Brutus interrupts a high-faluting speech to shout “shut the fuck up”, or words to that effect, to prisoners out of sight) was deftly done. Ms Lloyd and Dame Walter have both spent time working at Holloway, a woman’s prison, and two of the cast members came from Clean Break, a theatre-based charity for women in the criminal-justice system.
The prison meta-drama feels more like a gimmick than an essential element of the play, however. The production has plenty going on—bursts of loud music, tanks, curious weapons, dolls, mild nudity, to say nothing of the gender-bending—additional complications seemed de trop. But this explosion of creative energy is an impressive production. And the dog trying to warn Caesar away from the Senate on the Ides of March, writhing and barking and pulling at its lead, is superb. Why not an all-dog “Romeo and Juliet”?
Female Version Of Caesar No Fear Shakespeare
“Julius Caesar” is at the Donmar Warehouse in London until February 9th 2013
![Caesar Caesar](https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/130/images/44895-1-1323545370.jpg)
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