Over the weekend, Shawn and I made a trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to see a performance of Julius Caesar. We met up with a few people and spent a beautiful day in Stratford, Ontario.
The play was absolutely fantastic (though I may be slightly biased because Julius Caesar is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays). At first, I was a little put off when browsing the program I discovered the costumes deviated from traditional toga-wearing Romans. I dreaded having to sit through a badly done, heavy-handed modern interpretation of the play. Yet, in the end, this change of costume became my favorite part of the performance. Save for a few soldiers that looked more like turtles than fierce warriors, the pseudo-modern costumes added a sense of timelessness to a story otherwise firmly grounded in history. The costumes themselves blended aspects of military uniforms, modern street clothes, and the garb of 19th century gentlemen.
As for the performance itself, I felt that it was very well executed. All of the actors captured their characters and played their parts beautifully. However, my favorite performance was that of Cassius. When I first read the play in high school, he was my least favorite of all the conspirators against Caesar. Here, he was played splendidly and clad in simplistic, dark clothing throughout the play.
All in all, I enjoyed the short trip and despite a short delay at the border would be more than happy to do it again sometime.
Hey
Glad you liked Julius Caesar, it’s been getting mixed reviews, either people love it or, well, some aren’t very enthusiastic.
Check out all the reviews here: http://stratfordfestivalreviews.com/
We hated it. We left at the intermission. (and we’ve never left a Stratford play in our lives) My personal feeling was that it was hugely over- directed. The different costumes which went from togas, to sort of togas, to modern dress was (I thought, although my wife liked them more than me) kind of stupid. It was almost like someone said “Watch how cool we can be We’re going to dress people in modern, ancient and something in between, all in the same scene” When the actors ended scenes with their arms crossed over their chest, I thought they were going to get beamed up to the Enterprise.
Glad you liked it though.