TV Drama Review Julius Caesar

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Spoilers (if needed) Watched the brilliant all women production of Julius Caesar on BBC4 last night. Seen versions before - realized this time how little Caesar is actually in it. Hamlet, Lear & Macbeth make it to the closing scene, but Caesar is killed off half way through. It's really the Tragedy of Brutus, manipulated into the assassin's conspiracy, then regretting it afterwards, finally accepting his fate as a kind of karmic destiny, and death as an act of redemption. Harriet Walter is utterly spell-binding as Brutus, a naive idealist recognizing that he backed the wrong horse, fooled by the propaganda machine, just as Mark Anthony will use the crowds to turn on Brutus in the later scenes Caesar is creepy when saying nothing. THe opening shots of the cast in Caesar masks, each reflecting the ambition to be the Caesar, and later the ghost, a harbinger of fate more deadly than the ides of march soothsayer silently watching as each conspirator meets their fate is chilling. Music is used well too, guitars simulate gunfire, drummers literally pushed across the stage as relentless military advances. There is also the intervention of the screws (the setting is a women's prison) investigating each act of violence, dragging cast members off for prison activity as if oblivious and indifference to the drama being staged. At one point Brutus is taken out and an ill-prepared understudy takes over, relying on a copy of the play in book form, capturing the point of decline in Brutus's popularity before Harriet Walter returns. Such invention abounds through the production. I loved this Youtube - Marlon Brando in a more traditional movie version Arthur Chappell