If you missed this week’s “Meet the Press,” not to worry. You can make it up by catching a performance of “Julius Caesar” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Great writers, that is, can be spot-on prognosticators. A chief appeal of Shakespeare’s plays is that they rarely come across as dated or stale; their themes and characters seem as fresh and perilous as today’s headlines, as trip-wired to events in 20th and 21st Century America as they were reflective of those in 16th and 17th Century England.
“When we talked around the table for the first two weeks, before we got on our feet at rehearsals, we had a lot of talk about World War II and this play,” recalls Barbara Gaines, the theater’s artistic director, who is directing the play that opens Sunday and runs through Feb. 23.
“We talked a lot about Vietnam and the Korean War. About ancient Rome and Troy. About all of history. And if there is human life on this planet in a couple of thousand years, they’ll be dealing with the same problems.”
While Gaines is perpetually impressed by Shakespeare’s relevance to contemporary affairs, the analogues between “Julius Caesar” and the current international scene have been simply overwhelming, she says.
In the months leading up to Sunday’s opening, she started each day with the Tribune and The New York Times and then headed for the theater — where she moved seamlessly into the world of ancient Rome.
The names in the latter may have been Brutus and Julius Caesar and Antony, not Colin Powell and Saddam Hussein and George Bush, but the politics and power struggles are intensely familiar, she says.
“When I chose this play, we weren’t at war,” Gaines continues, in the rapid-fire, enthusiastic voice that anyone who has ever spoken to her knows well, the too-little-time-and-too-much-to-talk-about voice that gets the best out of actors and the most out of plays. “But it was fascinating to me and the cast to be in rehearsals for a play about the death of a tyrant. Now it’s all over the papers.
Another play about a tyrant
“During the Gulf War, I was in rehearsal for another play about a tyrant, `King John.’ Everybody thought I was a genius for picking `King John.’ The same thing is repeating itself right now.” The drumbeat of support for the war against Iraq echoes in her head, a cadence that syncopates the play.
“Julius Caesar” recounts how Brutus, a solemn man of conscience, is persuaded to join Cassius and the other conspirators who want to murder the title character. They fear Caesar’s popularity will turn him into a tyrant. After the assassination, the pro-Caesar team of Antony and Octavius, Caesar’s nephew, take on the forces led by Brutus and Cassius in a fight for the control of Rome.
“It’s about a man who elevates himself to the head of a government and then says he’s a god. The conspirators who hate Caesar want him out of there because he’s trying to turn their republic into a monarchy. They hate kings. They hate the monarchy,” Gaines says.
“Except for Brutus, all of the conspirators have their own private agendas against Caesar. All of their speeches make themselves sound so noble: `I’m doing this for Rome,’ `I’m doing this for my country’ — but they’re actually doing it for themselves.”
Gaines’ favorite line in “Julius Caesar” is one she would like audience members to turn over and over again in their heads on their way home from the theater, she says. It comes at the beginning of Act 2 and is spoken by a mournful Brutus about Caesar: “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins/Remorse from power.”
Wide application
The line, Gaines insists, would be equally at home in an op-ed column about Enron as it is in Shakespeare’s play.
“When leaders, be they corporate leaders or leaders of government or leaders of a household, lose their sympathy and ability to emphasize with the other side, that’s when abuse of power happens,” she declares.
Compared to the rest of the Shakespeare canon, she was never much interested in “Julius Caesar,” she admits. Like almost everybody else in America, she had been assigned to read it in high school and found it flat and predictable. Too many togas, too many windy politicians.
“But now I understand — thanks to the horrible situation in the world today — what it’s about,” Gaines says. “The conspirators all end up dead, end up hurting their country. The questions asked are, `Is the assassination of a world leader really the answer to complex questions? If this person is assassinated, how does it change the assassinated leader and the people around the assassinated leader? Does violence itself do good? Does it heal? How was history changed?'”
“Shakespeare just asks the questions. He doesn’t moralize. He just asks. The time couldn’t be more right [to stage `Julius Caesar’].”
Indeed, the play is filled with enough wily political strategizing to please even Karl Rove, the adviser to President Bush who masterminded the recent Republican gains in the House and Senate. The conspirators, seeking to win Cicero to their side because he’ll look good to the people, sound like media advisers to Vice President Cheney: “O, let us have him, for his silver hairs/Will purchase us a good opinion,/And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds,” Metellus notes coyly in Act 2. “It shall be said his judgment ruled our hands;/Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,/But all be buried in his gravity.”
Gaines is careful not to blame one political party or the other for the tenuous world situation, in which a tyrant’s downfall is the desired outcome of another nation’s foreign policy. “I’m on all sides. Nothing inside of me says this is the Republican’s fault. I am reasonably cynical when it comes to all people who have authority. It’s not anti-Democrat or anti-Republican. It’s that people in power often behave in similar ways. If we can just show it, people can recognize it.
“I always want to question. I feel it’s my responsibility,” Gaines declares. “No nation that calls itself a free nation should ever be afraid of discussion. No nation that calls itself a free nation should ever feel its citizens are being unpatriotic by challenging whatever the existing order is. Only by discussion do we flush out the good ideas from the bad ideas.”
She hopes that those who witness “Julius Caesar” also will discover within themselves a renewed desire to question. “My goal is for people to leave the theater needing to ask questions of their government and of themselves.”
And if her political views linking “Julius Caesar” to the seemingly inevitable war with Iraq land her in hot water?
Gaines is cheerfully unrepentant. “I love unexplored territory. I love going off a cliff. Sometimes I hurt myself. And sometimes I fly.”
