For all its popularity, Shakespeare's Roman tragedy rarely lives up to expectations. Caesar is in danger of seeming a cipher, the mob is often just a handful of extras and the action loses momentum after the Forum scene. But a handful of productions have left their mark.
In 1972 Trevor Nunn staged the play as part of a Roman quartet, boasted a dominant Caesar in Mark Dignam and in John Wood possessed a Brutus who totally revised our view of the character by playing him not as the usual wet liberal but as a wrong-headed dogmatist. Peter Stein, in a German production I saw at Salzburg in the early 1990s and that later came to Edinburgh, deployed a vast crowd, apparently made up of Austrian soldiers, that created a terrifying sense of unleashed anarchy.
More recently I've seen perfectly decent productions by, among others, Edward Hall, Peter Hall and Lucy Bailey at Stratford and Giles Block at Shakespeare's Globe. There is also a creditable Joseph Mankiewicz 1953 movie with Brando as Mark Antony and Gielgud as Cassius.
But far and away the best production of recent times was Greg Doran's for the RSC in 2012. By setting the play in a modern African state, Doran gave the debate about the ethics of political murder new urgency. His cast was also outstanding. Paterson Joseph as Brutus, Cyril Nri as Cassius, Ray Fearon as Mark Antony and Jeffery Kissoon as Caesar proved how rich Britain is in black classical actors. By dispensing with an interval, although I gather that changed for the West End transfer, Doran made the play an event of mounting, rather than dwindling, theatrical excitement.
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