Julius Ceasar Play April 21, 2008

I went to the Sunday evening showing of Julius Caesar at the Oxford Community Arts Center.  I will admit, this is the first time I have ever seen this play and I did not know what to expect.  That being said, I wanted to say good job to Erin Haley.  She did a great job in all of her parts and with all of her lines!  Actually, that being said, I thought everyone did a great job last night.  The girl who played Cassius was especially good, and she did an excellent job of portraying her emotions in the play.  Cassius was the one who organized Julius Caesar’s death, and she also chose the other members of Senate to help her take down the emperor.  She was angry at Brutus when he was reluctant to murder Caesar, yet with her patient convincing, she compelled him to join in the action.  Also, I thought it was very interesting that Cassius would be played as a woman in this rendition of Julius Caesar.  I am taking Western Civilization this semester, and we spent a great deal of time on the Romans, Julius Caesar, the Senate, etc.  During this time period, there were no women in the Senate.  It was strictly a job for men, and women would not even be considered worthy enough to represent a group of people.  There job was to stay at home, and the fact that this play showed Cassius to be a strong, willful, and powerful woman, completely changed the dynamics of the original play.  In this play, there were many women who had powerful roles; however, the role of Cassius was the most dominating female role. However, casting Cassius as the main female role made we wonder why did the director choose to make Cassius a woman?  I thought Erin said in class that the person who directed this changed a lot of things, but left the basics or something like that.  So then, why not make Julius Caesar a woman and leave Cassius as a man?  With Julius Caesar cast as a woman, the play could have been centered on Cassius wishing to slay Caesar because she was a woman, and he felt that a woman should not be allowed to rule a country, and that she was inferior to him.  But anyways, casting Cassius as a female gave women such a more powerful role in this play.  However, casting Cassius as the lead female portrayed women as the heartless, fearless, and angry members of society.  Although at times I was a little confused by this play, I thought overall that it was very well done.  Cassius looked like an FBI agent almost with her badge on her shoulders, and her death was a very gruesome one.  Additionally, I thought it was very ironic that there was a gun in the play, and even more so, that someone was killed by the gun! I am pretty sure that guns were not around back in those days, but they made for a very interesting end to some of those lives.  However, that also makes me wonder why more people were not killed by the guns, and make it a sort of Jack Bauer (from the shoe 24) meets Julius Caesar kind of thing.  I think that would have made for a very interesting play.  All in all, I thought this play was very good, and their use of costumes and changing of roles made things original, and that is a very good thing. 

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