To answer Melissa Errico Fan, I know she starts bleeding in her leg. I wasn't watching her though before she started bleeding (I felt that Jessica Hecht and the woman playing Caesar's wife were very strange and Eamonn Walker as Mark Antony needs to work on his annunciation). This production, however, was amazing. Denzel (who makes a point of signing autographs for everyone who waits outside the stage door, according to an usher. I don't like getting autographs so we didn't wait after.) was great, but my favorite actor had to be Jack Willis as Casca (look for a Featured Actor in a play nomination for him) he took what was sort of a loser role (compared to Brutus, Cassius, and Caesar) and stole just about every scene he was in. Colm Feore, who played Cassius was incredible as well.
I was rather confused about the setting. I picked up that they were in some sort of futuristic state (everyone has to wear an ID card around their necks) but I didn't pick anything up about post-apocalyptic "Oil Wars." At some points it seemed as though it were being performed in the ruins of Rome (one scene in particular felt as though we were on the inside of a ruined Coliseum). As an earlier poster said however, it doesn't really matter as they fully maintain the original text.
Also, to anyone who saw anything else recently in the Belasco Theatre, is it in really bad shape or did they just trash it to make the set which is essentially a collection of ruins spread out into the theatre. The fronts of the boxes on the mezzanine level were ripped out and there were only one or two tattered looking seats in each. Actors from the show, however sat in these boxes at various points in the show so maybe they just trashed those boxes for this production.
If you have any way of getting tickets (and we got house seats for a Saturday matinee the day before in row C of the center orchestra) go, you won't regret this. Anytime you can see Shakespeare done well and anytime you can see a famous actor give a knockout performance on Broadway you should go, and this is definitely one of those opportunities.
Updated On: 3/24/05 at 12:53 AM
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