An African "Julius Caesar' in Brooklyn

"To update or not to update"— that is the question for every new production of a Shakespeare play.

Directors and designers today strive to outdo each other with clever, ingenious re-imaginings of the Bard's tragedies and comedies. Look no further than the numerous and extreme renderings of Macbeth in New York and London over the past five years, whose settings range from Punchdrunk Theatre's Gothic horror house (click here) to Rupert Goold's modern kitchen-turned-abattoir to James Lloyd's post-apocalypse Scotland (click here) to Alan Cumming's one-man show.

In contrast to these recent efforts, there's nothing strained about the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company's powerful rendering of Julius Caesar, now playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Director Gregory Doran has made a bold, believable choice in setting his production in today's strife-torn Africa, with an all-black British and African cast. As a result, he shines a bright new light on the Shakespearean play we all memorized in high school and thought we knew inside and out.

Mandela's favorite

While preparing for this production, Doran learned that Julius Caesar was the Shakespeare play most widely performed in Africa— and that it held a special place in the heart of Nelson Mandela, the black South African activist who was imprisoned for 27 years for his opposition to apartheid, and subsequently abolished it as South Africa's president.

According to the story, one of Mandela's fellow inmates had smuggled a copy of Shakespeare's complete works into prison, where it was passed surreptitiously among the inmates and reverently dubbed "the Bible." Mandela had initialed one line from Julius Caesar that sustained him through those dark years: "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste death but once."

Moved by Mandela's choice of quote as well as his unmatched heroism, Gregory selected modern Africa as the setting for his Julius Caesar. Given the number of coups and counter-coups unfolding in these turbulent times of the Arab Spring, it's an inspired choice for a play about tyrants, conspiracies and assassinations.

Overpowering presence

Before the play begins, we watch a flag-waving throng in colorful African dress gathering to welcome Caesar home from the Pompey war. While African drums beat wildly, the celebrants dance and sing on the steep, sun-lit stone steps of the palace, atop which sits a gargantuan statue of their Caesar.

As played with towering authority by the charismatic Jeffery Kissoon, this African Caesar cuts a formidable, fearful figure in an all-white suit. ("He doth bestride the narrow world/Like a colossus," says Cassius, aptly describing Kissoon's overpowering stage presence.)

In this transplanted context, the famous conspiracy story unfolds naturally. The conspirators (Cassius, Brutus, Casca et al) gather, dressed in dashikis. They plot to assassinate Caesar, who they fear has become too powerful for the nation's good.

The early scenes are heavy with foreboding. The soothsayer who prophesizes, "Beware the Ides of March" is transformed into an African voodoo dancer, his writhing bare body caked in eerie white chalk. As night falls, a tempestuous storm heightens the fear of what's to come.

Frightening image

On the dreaded day, the assassins huddle on the steep Senate steps. The image of their heads hooded in heavy black tarps is one of the most frightening I've seen on stage recently. As the chalk-white soothsayer looks on, the conspirators shed their cover. Dressed in inky black Roman togas, their naked arms and shaved heads gleam. When Caesar enters (defying the soothsayer's prophesy), they brandish long machetes, do the terrible deed, and smear their bare hands in Caesar's blood.

The impact of this powerful scene is a credit to Doran's directorial dexterity and economy, in contrast to the indulgent, over-the-top violence we've recently witnessed on stage (in the Macbeth at the Trafalgar Studios in London last month, for example).

Doran's cast offers insightful new interpretations of a number of roles. As performed by a vigorous Paterson Joseph, Brutus seems as power-hungry and ambitious as Caesar himself.

Mark Antony, as performed by a commanding Ray Fearon, exudes the charisma of a rock star. Howling, "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war," he takes control with confidence as well as compassion. Lucius, as played by a winsome Simon Manyonda, is Brutus's bumbling young aide, providing welcome comic relief.

Havel's vision

Ultimately, Doran's Julius Caesar reveals a drama that transcends conspiracy and violent assassination. It's also about the aftermath. Yes, the statue of Caesar comes crashing down at the end (echoes of Saddam Hussein's), but we're haunted with the notion that another will soon take its place.

In a time when troubled countries in Africa and the Middle East are ruled by one Khadaffi after another, we may try to topple them, but how do we know they won't be replaced by another tyrant in the end?

In 1971, when Czechoslovakia suffered under harsh Communist rule and the playwright Vaclav Havel was blacklisted and imprisoned, he wrote his own variation of Julius Caesar: a play called The Conspirators.

In Havel's version, an unnamed Middle Eastern country topples a dictator and forms a democracy. Gradually, a secret conspiracy forms within the government, allegedly to protect its freedoms. In a fit of paranoia, the cabinet recalls the former dictator to restore order. Only in the end does the cabinet discover that the conspiracy consisted of its very own members.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men." Yes there is, and it's a recurring and disturbing one.