[In the following excerpted review of Laird Williamson's 2003 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Julius Caesar, Berlin compliments Williamson's intriguing interpretation of the play, which emphasized Caesar's tyrannical nature and the irresistible power of fate.]

[I]n the OSF [Oregon Shakespeare Festival] production of Julius Caesar, performed in the indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre, … director Laird Williamson … [places] his Roman play in modern times without specifically designating a fixed time. That is, he gives us costumes that include World War I uniforms and coats, World War II Gestapo raincoats, American Green Beret uniforms, Clockwork Orange masks and garb, Marlene Dietrich stockings and garters, and miscellaneous rag outfits usually associated with the homeless. In stage center we find a removable wall made of scrap metal that was once armor, guns, swords, knives. The music that greets us in the play's beginning and that we hear at selected moments throughout the play is ominous and discordant. The stage throughout is filled with shadows, patches of darkness. Williamson said that he was looking for a film noir effect, and he achieves it. That he offers as the epigraph to his program notes a quote from Brecht points us to the kind of “modern” world he is positing. For him, as for Shakespeare, what we have in Julius Caesar are scenes that will be replayed in every generation: “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn, and accents yet unknown.” But the scene in the OSF production is not “lofty.” We are thrust into a modern dog-eat-dog world filled with suspicion and ominous forebodings, where political power corrupts, where war and destruction seem inevitable despite the “honorable” intentions of some supposedly good men, where chaos and discord finally triumph. Cleverly, Williamson gives Shakespeare's soothsayer an added persona, that of Ate, the Greek goddess of discord, played by a thin, screeching, frenetic, white-faced Christine Williams, who seems to have stepped out of a decadent Weimar cabaret, and whose unheeded prophetic warnings (the soothsayer part) eventually lead to the bloodshed and violence which allow her to thrive (the Ate part). Shakespeare's confluence of character and fate is nicely realized in this interesting directorial addition.

Williamson posits a Julius Caesar who is clearly a tyrant. Even before the play begins we are staring at a huge photo of Caesar's face, obviously modeled on the familiar Lenin or Mao portraits. He is the “top dog” that Brecht refers to in a ditty quoted by Williamson in his notes: “Remember Julius Caesar's fame / Recall his destiny. / Of all the dogs top dog was he. … / But his best friends did him in thoroughly. / And all because top dog was he.” Caesar, as played by William Langan (OSF's Titus), has no redeeming qualities. Haughty, supercilious, unbending, cold, he seems to deserve the animosity of his fellow Romans. This, of course, is always the important decision for a director of Julius Caesar—is Caesar a tyrant deservedly butchered, or is he a great leader, bringing order and stability to the Roman republic, envied and killed by lesser men? Shakespeare doesn't give us the answer; in fact, he plays with us, so that at times we favor the conspirators, at times we sympathize with Caesar. I would even suggest that he calculatingly is forcing us into the position of the mob—changing our minds, our positions, prodding us to recognize our own fickleness. We literally become the mob in this production when, at various times, Williamson has some of his actors station themselves in the audience. Williamson has not given us any opportunity to get close to Caesar, not even at the moment of his assassination. Langan, dressed in a white robe, is stabbed in front of a fountain of blood. The many stabbings drench the white robe red, and then, receiving the final thrust by Brutus he utters the words we all know, “Et tu, Brute?—Then fall Caesar!” This is the moment of greatest disappointment for Caesar. Here, even if nowhere else, something should be tugging at us, a touch of genuine human disappointment. Langan says the words rather neutrally, and then tries to attack Brutus in a gesture of self defense. This was a directorial decision that diminishes the moment, I believe, but it does conform to Williamson's larger attitude toward the play. In general, he seems to be flattening Shakespeare's characters, concentrating instead on the atmosphere of intrigue and doom, pointing to the inevitable triumph of Ate, who accompanies the Ghost of Caesar when he visits Brutus in the tent scene. It is Ate, in white lingerie, gartered like Marlene Dietrich, exuding a decadent German aroma, who appears on the battlefield in the play's last act, busily collecting the dogtags of slain soldiers (dogs again?), relishing the chaos she seemed to be anticipating throughout the play.

Julius Caesar, containing many public scenes, is written in what could be called a rhetorical style, making it a rather cool play. The OSF actors, usually with success, dampen down the rhetoric in their deliveries. Particularly effective, for example, was Antony's famous speech at the forum. Williamson sets it up in such a way that we feel we are listening to a funeral sermon in a chapel. Calpurnia, in mourning black, seated next to the coffin containing her husband, is stonily staring directly at the audience while Antony, played by Dan Donohue, delivers the speech feelingly, haltingly at times, genuinely grieving at the loss of a friend. He precisely fingers the tears in the blood-stained white garment that Caesar wore, pinpointing which conspirators made the stabs. Only toward the end of the speech does he become ominous, manipulating the crowd toward mischief, becoming, like all the other characters, a political animal, a contender for top dog. The bodyguards surrounding him wear leather jackets with the picture of Antony on the back, and we are forced to recall the portrait of the dictator Caesar who was staring at us in the play's beginning. It goes on, we see, and all the goings-on lead to the predicted discord of the goddess Ate.

The direct result of Antony's speech is havoc, powerfully captured in this production in the Cinna the Poet scene. The innocent man—a poet, not the conspirator of the same name—is brutally assaulted by men in Clockwork Orange outfits, wearing masks, and wielding clubs. In this scene of pure destructive cruelty Williamson draws on our knowledge of the movie, just as in the general atmosphere of intrigue he draws on our experience of film noir.

Although Brutus is considered to be the play's tragic hero he doesn't possess the kind of charisma that we associate with Hamlet or Othello or Macbeth. Usually he is competing for audience attention with Cassius and Antony and even Caesar, so that in any particular production much depends on the special qualities of the actor. (For example, Gielgud and Brando, as Cassius and Antony, overshadowed the very capable, intelligent performance of James Mason in the Mankiewicz movie.) In the OSF production, Brutus is played by Derrick Lee Weeden, whose largeness of body and dangerous presence filled the stage when he played Aaron the Moor in Titus. As Brutus, he is usually acted upon, seems to be hiding his strength, underplaying, until the battlefield scenes where his Green Beret uniform and his military bearing allow him to display his height, in fact, allow him to project the very arrogance that we associated with Caesar. His uncharacteristic anger at Cassius in the tent scene erupts into a physical threat, at which point Cassius—and this is Shakespeare's point—sees himself as the victim of another Caesar. Cassius, as played by Mark Murphey (who has been with OSF for twenty seasons!), projects throughout the hard edge of a clever intellectual politician, but in the warmer tent scene he emerges as a vulnerable man. An effective piece of theater, with both actors allowing the personal to break through this very public play.

This Julius Caesar was vibrant, often exciting theater, respectful of Shakespeare's words, placing them in a dark, doom-laden modern context that speaks directly to us.