Summary 
Brilliantly modernized political drama with a drunken Antony triumphing over an icy intellectual Brutus and a fiery Cassius. Remarkably staged, from men in tuxedoes and women in evening gowns at political press conferences to the machinations of modern warfare with automatic rifles and flak jackets. Enhanced with vivid special effects that include haunting onstage projections and graphic use of stage blood. Excellent production fully captures the characters and the conflicts.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by James Noone. Lights by Kevin Adams. Costumes by Mariann Verheyen. Sound by Scott Myers. Original music by Alaric Jans. Projections by John Boesche.
Cast
Scott Jaeck (Mark Antony), David Lively (Flavius), Steve Pickering (Marullus), Jack Ryland (Julius Caesar), Jay Whittaker (Casca), Ellen Karas (Calpurnia), Jim Slonina (Soothsayer), Kevin Gudahl (Brutus), Scott Parkinson (Cassius), Kimberly Hebert-Gregory (Portia), James Harms (Ligarius), Alan Wilder (Cinna the Poet), Guy Adkins (Octavius).
Analysis
Barbara Gaines brings Julius Caesar to contemporary times, and a long upstage scrim shows portraits of assassinated world leaders such as Gandhi and Lincoln. Gaines utilizes a series of overhead skylight panels to display projections such as rolling clouds or the stars of an evening sky.
The stage of Chicago Shakespeare Theater's elegant lakefront space shines with metal and glass, the ultra-modern but cold landscape of the privileged few. When a drunken Antony staggers onstage in a prologue, he sips a cocktail and lurches after two young women in short-skirted evening wear. He grabs at them and they giggle and flee, and Antony's elevation from and obliviousness to the struggles of the commoners becomes clear. In counterpoint, when Flavius and Marullus arrive in 1.1, they speak with the rabble, dressed in shabby winter clothing and drinking from bottles, and the face of Julius Caesar appears in the roll of clouds on the projection screens above. The men incite the crowd to pull down the curtain of assassinated rulers, then flee as the stage swarms with black-clad police officers in flak vests and helmets, wielding assault rifles.
Gaines plays 1.2 like a Hollywood press conference, with twin banks of side lighting shining upon Caesar and Calpurnia. Amid flashbulb bursts, reporters roam with cameras and shout questions while the onstage audience occasionally breaks into applause. Everyone wears modern formal dress - tuxedoes, business suits and evening gowns - except Mark Antony, who arrives late in sweats and sneakers, the other members of his basketball team lingering just offstage, and the Soothsayer - "beware the ides of March!" - a modern punk with a mohawk haircut, ear rings, and a studded black jacket.
Kevin Gudahl as Brutus and Scott Parkinson as Cassius are the heart of this production, Gudahl a brooding and divided politician, Parkinson a calculating, angry string-puller. They discuss politics downstage, responding to cheers from an offstage audience as Caesar is thrice offered the crown by Antony. Doors slide sideways, exposing the upstage area like a deep tunnel. Casca joins them, and Cassius brandishes a switchblade knife, the seeds of conspiracy planted in Brutus signaled by strobe lightning and the thunder of an approaching storm.
Gudahl's Brutus, mature and intellectual in sweater and wire-rimmed eyeglasses, struggles with his conscience in 2.1, barking a barrage of impatient orders to Lucius. Cassius' conspirators arrive from the upstage tunnel, eerily back lit and slowly approaching, wearing hats and trench coats and concealing their faces. Gaines contrasts Brutus' role in the murderous conspiracy with his acts of compassion: he kneels before Portia to attend to her self-inflicted thigh wound, welcomes the aged Ligarius into his home, and finally shows tenderness toward the servant Lucius.
During the 2.2 thunderstorm, a night-gowned Caesar cries out for Calpurnia. They are joined by a hung-over Mark Antony - Scott Jaeck's weary playboy wears an untied necktie and dark sunglasses, and he flinches when he removes them - and then by Artemidorus, who composes his indictment of the conspirators at a typewriter offstage right. Caesar agrees to appear before the Senate, and slides 3.1 to center stage on a small platform. After Artemidorus is muscled offstage by a team of SWAT-like bodyguards, Caesar is assaulted. Blood packs let fly, and blood splatters high in the air and far across the stage. When Brutus approaches for the unkindest cut of all - "et tu, Brute?" - Gudahl crouches and swings his arm with lethal flourish.
Amid a chant - "Peace, Freedom, Liberty!" - the assassins bloody their hands and faces over Caesar's prone body. When Antony approaches, Cassius threatens him with a knife, and after Antony shakes hands with each of them, bloodying himself, Cassius brushes past him and exits. Gaines chooses this tenuous political moment for her brief intermission. (Note: Chicago Shakespeare Theater's design staff created 140 costumes for the massive cast of 39 performers - actors involved in the assassination of Caesar each had five business suits fitted - and the wardrobe must be dry-cleaned twice a week.)
Gudahl's gentle Brutus quells the crowd - "we will be satisfied!" - via a bull horn as the second half opens with 3.2. The commoners are interspersed throughout all three levels of the theatre, wearing coats, caps, gloves, and scarves. Wearing a double-breasted suit with blue shirt and red tie, the sophisticated orator Brutus manages to calmly turn the sentiments of the crowd, even as Caesar's shrouded body is brought onstage upon an ambulance gurney and the crowd chants first "Caesar!" then, "They're traitors!" Jaeck's impassioned Antony of course inflames the crowd once again, and Jaeck expertly conceals his cold calculations within an outward show of emotion.
After Cinna the Poet is mauled to death by rabble in 3.3 - surrounded, beaten, then stripped of his jacket and shoes - Octavius and Antony appear in dress blue military uniforms, adorned with medals. The upstage scrim reveals seven rows of seven columns of theatre-style head shots of each conspirator. Antony coldly declares all are to die.
With the overhead screens showing constellations of stars and a sliver of moon, Gudahl's Brutus sits at a 4.2 table. He and his soldiers wear black rebel uniforms and berets, and carry side arms. During the heat of the 4.3 argument, Cassius draws, cocks, and aims his pistol at Brutus' head, clearly the emotional fire to Brutus' icy intellect.
After Lucius' brief playing of a harmonica, Brutus succumbs to sleep and the ghost of Caesar. Pleasant clouds creep over the overhead screen, but the sky turns blood red as the face of Caesar appears among the clouds, his expression a glare. The sky remains red but becomes oddly psychedelic, like blood under a microscope, as Brutus awakens for 5.1. A distant saxophone plays as Brutus and Cassius speak for a final time, and a dramatic bass and drum beat punctuates the quick vignettes of combat. Asynchronous music crashes in the darkness between scenes, and at 5.5, with the tide clearly toward Antony and Octavius, Brutus tears off his black flak jacket and wields his knife. As machine gun fire pounds nearby, Gudahl's Brutus impales himself, and Antony emerges victorious amid a crush of media and photographers.
Gaines' Julius Caesar, despite the flow of stage blood, plays as more an intellectual than an emotional exercise, with Kevin Gudahl's agonized Brutus - "the noblest Roman of them all" - the focus, being tragically pulled toward political violence by the fiery Cassius and toward political dishonor by the drunken Antony.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.21, No.2, Spring/Summer 2003.