What we have from the Asolo Conservatory in these days of pandemic danger is an equally dangerous rendering of Shakespeare’s play into a modern play. The guiding principle of multiple changes in characterization is to eliminate typical gender roles. That meant casting women in men’s parts and dividing some into two people of opposite gender identity. It is perplexing to me how these changes bring out the meaning of Shakespeare’s play as a profoundly political one. Hasn’t it always been?
Julius Caesar is now Julia (Merri Rashoyan, okay except for typifying the Roman or any other era since). Ptah Garvin is strong but has a meaningless change of sex as Calpurnicus. Brutus is now two characters(!), the Bruti - Daniel Ajuk and Charlotte Foster - presumably because neither sex can be blamed completely for the betrayal.
What happens to Marc Anthony? Page Klopfenstein and Derek Sikkema make his speech a chorus. There’s two Cassius (I think) also—not quite clearly split between Giovanni Rincon and Dayna Palya. But then Garrick Sigl comes on as a more traditional Cassius. Emily Bohn appears sturdy as Messala. Minor roles in the original are omitted or slightly subsumed in the ones presented.
All of these changes seem to be monumental but they are not. As someone who directed drama in a woman’s college, I can assure that women are quite as capable of playing men as boys were in Shakespeare’s day in playing women. The results are called good casting and good acting.
Scenes are recorded in Sarasota’s Selby Gardens, The Ringling, in students’ homes, and in front of a green screen. I did not see credit for the costuming but have no objection to the kind of serviceable robes used. As I watched this version of Julius Caesar, I kept recalling seeing in my senior college year, a student produced film of the play from recent Northwestern U. grads. Marc Anthony was Charlton Heston (first arriving in loincloth!), the Museum of Science and Industry and Chicago’s Soldiers Field were Roman temples, and the Battle of Philippi was filmed in the nearby Indiana Sand Dunes (in costumes like bathrobes). I doubt that the present Asolo Conservatory will be as memorable—or at least not in the same way.
