Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is, perhaps surprisingly for people who don’t know the play, not really about Caesar, it’s about Brutus and his struggle with the decision to be drawn into the conspiracy to murder the increasingly imperial Caesar in the hopes of restoring a free Roman Republic. And then once the murder is committed, he must stand by his decision and defend it, not only ethically, but on the field of battle. The Juniata College production, directed by Cosimo Sciortino, was a somewhat classical, but not necessarily inspiring, rendition of the play.

Julius Caesar begins with a parade in honor of Caesar who has become the most popular man in Rome, and who many Senators fear will try to become a king. Cassius, one of Rome’s leading men, draws Brutus aside and tells him of a plot to free Rome from Caesar’s dominance. Brutus is torn between his great friendship for Caesar and his dedication to the ideal of Roman freedom, but finally he agrees to join the conspiracy. As the plot comes together, Brutus repeatedly insists that only Caesar can be killed (not his friend Mark Antony) and that the killers must immediately proclaim their motives publicly. The appointed day arrives and a group of Senators kill Caesar. Mark Antony arrives and gets permission to speak at his friend’s funeral, on the condition that he doesn’t condemn the murderers. Brutus gives a funeral speech about liberty, then Antony gives a speech pointing to the many virtues of the slain man and implying—though carefully never stating outright—that the conspirators were fiendishly wrong. A civil war breaks out pitting Antony and Octavius against Brutus and Cassius, with Antony and Octavius in the ascent. Finally, there is a climactic battle, where the tide turns back and forth until Cassius, having heard (incorrectly) of his friend’s death, commits suicide. As the battle turns against his forces, Brutus finally kills himself as well, and when Antony and Octavius find his body they acknowledge his nobility and honor.

One of the big problems with Caesar from a performance perspective is that it’s so rhetorical. There are so many speeches that, while they’re well crafted according to the Classical principles of rhetoric, they lend themselves to simple recitation/declamation rather than the more naturalistic acting that contemporary audiences tend to expect. And I think much of the Juniata performance fell into this trap. While the actors knew the words, their intonation, inflection, and emoting often didn’t show that they understood the emotional timbre of the words they spoke. Will Shearer (Cassius) and Ashley Purvis (Casca) especially had this problem. Shearer did a fine job emoting when Cassius blames Brutus (Ben Josefson) for not trusting him, but throughout the opening portion it wasn’t clear what style Cassius was supposed to have. Was he a cunning manipulator, a concerned citizen driven to desperate measures, a sinister assassin? As Shearer was recruiting Josefson into the conspiracy, he was largely just flat. In some sense, this was a classical performance, as the lack of clear emotional display put the words front and center—which was very Elizabethan, as Shakespeare’s original audiences would have expected to follow the storyline verbally much more than through naturalistic action. Again, however, modern audiences don’t typically find this approach to performance engaging, and the play did seem to drag.

There were some bright spots, however. Mark Antony’s (Veta Piscitella) funerary speech praising—or, rather, burying him—Caesar was high energy and impassioned. But the standout for me was Josefson’s Brutus. He was not high energy, but the subtlety of the performance did an excellent job conveying the moral dilemma at the heart of Brutus’ internal conflict. Josefson was especially strong when performing alone, like in the soliloquies alone in his house the night before the assassination, or shortly before the final battle. These musings gave a great psychological depth to the character through the performance.

The other noteworthy thing is that the Juniata performance was in the round, which is always a challenging performance style because the actors need to try and divide their attention between the multiple sides of the space. Much of the action was actually performed around the outside of the stage proper (see the image above), which meant that it was occurring farther away from at least one group of audience members—a logistical problem. Thematically it made sense to have much of the conspiratorial discussion occur around the outside of the main area, but it sometimes made seeing the performers a challenge.