STAGE REVIEW : Taper Offers a ‘Caesar’ in Contemporary Mood

“The abuse of greatness,” Brutus is heard saying in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” at the Mark Taper Forum, “is when it disjoins remorse from power.” The abuse of power, one might comment on the occasion of the opening of this production, is when it disjoins remorse from greatness.

Translation: If you, the director in power, are going to update a text to make it more urgent and topical, use care to preserve its greatness or be sorry. All is admissible if it is made to work. But when situations are forced into a certain visual vocabulary chiefly to fit a preconceived idea, danger lurks.

And so it does in director Oskar Eustis and dramaturge Leon Katz’s headline-chasing “Caesar,” a staging ostensibly set in Rome, 44-42 BC, where they fly American flags, beat people with nightsticks, have stereotypical Secret Service men behind every marble pillar, and where Brutus and Marc Antony don’t deliver speeches: They hold press conferences--for odd-looking reporters wearing fedoras but carrying tape and video recorders. ( Whatwuzthatagain? )

Where are we, you might well ask, and why are we here?

The first part of the question can be answered with everywhere/anywhere. Not original, but fine. The second part is harder. Eustis wants to make modern satirical statements through the universality in Shakespeare’s play, that much is clear. But he doesn’t do it gracefully or always logically, or consistently, treading a lot of water in scenes that don’t offer the gratification of the quick-I.D., a stage filled with instant recognition: Rodney King-style beatings, a Calpurnia dressed a la Jackie Kennedy, yellow ribbons and banks of TV monitors, fast becoming the modern theater’s most abusive and abused cliche.

In fairness to Eustis, where there’s a cliche, there’s a reason. Television has not permeated, it has drenched our modern consciousness. It’s as inevitable as taxes. More problematic are the mechanics of the play itself that seem to be slowed to a crawl by the attempt to modernize. What we see--and this is Eustis’ main point--is the beginning of a Fascist state that purports to care for its people. You can guess where the parallels lie (even if he misses a swell bet by not having the soothsayer who warns of the Ides of March be one of the homeless).

On Yael Pardess’ Romanesque set (an intimation of the White House that becomes awkward under camouflage in the military scenes), we have Brutus (Dakin Matthews) and Cassius (Delroy Lindo) plotting Caesar’s overthrow in the path of the eavesdropping Secret Service. Matthews and Lindo have fun with it, but it’s an unlikely spot for serious talk of treason.

The matter of the press conference after Caesar’s death, however, is thorniest. A handful of reporters is not an angry mob. This substitution is a double-whammy that has the effect of making Shakespeare’s rhetoric, written to sway a throng, sound overblown--and forces actors to speak into mikes with the clipped terseness of angry politicians. Hardly heroic.

Eustis, for whatever reason, has the bad idea of changing the position of the lectern while Antony (Casey Biggs) is in the middle of delivering his most passionate appeal. Done in sudden total darkness, with only the monitors lit, it’s a pointless bit of klunky business that takes too long and leaves an audience wondering if there’s been a partial power failure.

The failure is one of the dramatic imagination, apparently willing here to mangle and halt momentum for the sake of some sort of other far more obscure agenda. Add it to the improbability (an old one) of using daggers to murder Caesar but handguns to kill Cassius, and you can see the pitfalls of logic that bedevil this show.

The late John Hirsch had done an update of “Coriolanus” at the San Diego Old Globe in 1988 that used (and misused) some of the same conventions, but it flew like the wind and left you breathless. It never forgot that its first obligation was to dramatic movement. This “Caesar” plods, grounding itself with over-reaching and overwrought effect.

The actors cannot consistently overcome the inconsistencies, but Richard Frank is an exemplary Casca, vivid yet full of nuance and innuendo; Doug Hutchinson delivers a humorous sketch as the sleepy Lucius and Matthews is a strong, tormented Brutus hampered only by the lack of definition in the director’s concept. Even an actor as seasoned as he cannot overcome the glib photo-opportunity limitations of the most crucial scenes.

The same applies to Biggs’ Antony, a strangely colorless portrayal from an actor with otherwise pedigreed stage credentials.

Lindo is more problematic as Cassius, full of presence, but not in full control of the language.

Lindo is more problematic as Cassius, full of presence, but not in full control of the language.

Lise Hilboldt as Calpurnia and Lisa Banes as Portia bring intelligence to their minor roles, as does Stephen Markle as the marked Caesar, a ruler who looks surprisingly like an older Dan Quayle.

Intentional? In a production so loaded with the wrong kind of contemporaneousness, the facile image, a kind of theater TvQ, it’s difficult not to wonder. Eustis may be making a satirical statement about the silliness of it all, but he’s mixed his metaphor one time too many. The sly closing images about home and country are in the wrong play and essentially too little, too late.

“Julius Caesar,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 23. $24-$30; (213) 410-1062, (714) 634-1300, TDD (213) 680-4017). Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

‘Julius Caesar’

Stephen Markle Julius Caesar

Casey Biggs Marc Antony

Dakin Matthews Marcus Brutus

Delroy Lindo Caius Cassius

Richard Frank Casca

Lise Hilboldt Calpurnia

Lisa Banes Portia

Kenny Ransom Cinna

Doug Hutchinson Lucius

James Jean Parks Octavius Caesar

Kimberly Scott Decia Brutus

Vaughn Armstrong Cicero/Trebonius/Messala

Marcus Chong Cinna, a poet

A Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum production of Shakespeare’s play. Associate producer Robert Egan. Director Oskar Eustis. Dramaturge Leon Katz. Sets Yael Pardess. Lights Tom Ruzika. Costumes Jeffrey Struckman. Video Ken Kobland. Composer Mel Marvin. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Fight choreography Anthony DeLongis. Production stage manager Cari Norton. Stage manager Ann C. Dippel.