Giovanni Navarro (Photo by Mark Chen)
Reviewed by Joel Beers
Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Through February 7
Alana Maria, Michele Schultz and Dominic Ryan Gabriel (Photo by Mark Chen)
Its title names one of history’s most famous figures. Its drama and moral weight belong to a character who dominates from start to finish. Yet in terms of contemporary resonance, William Shakespeare’s 1599 play Julius Caesar is all about a character who doesn’t fully emerge until halfway through. It is Mark Antony — the champion of the assassinated Caesar — who turns grief into spectacle, loyalty into persuasion and rhetoric into power.
At least that’s the impression given by this Long Beach Shakespeare Company production, a show that doesn’t seem to catch fire until Dominic Ryan Gabriel delivers his brilliantly seductive oratory as Marc Antony just after intermission. Up until then, the play muddles through political scheming, Brutus’s moral wrestling, and the conspirators’ fumbling attempts to control events — leaving the play’s early acts feeling uneven and sluggish. It’s a lull that makes Antony’s explosive funeral oration all the more electrifying.
It’s hard to tell whether the play truly shifts into second gear with Antony’s funeral oration because Shakespeare intended it or because the performances early on in this production are largely tepid. Trevor Hart, tasked with portraying perhaps Shakespeare’s most underwritten titular character, can’t elevate Caesar beyond the play’s cardboard-thin writing; he feels more like a historical placeholder than a living man. Giovanni Navarro’s Cassius is earnest and intense but lacks the subtlety and persuasive edge needed to make his conversion of Brutus fully believable, leaving the conspirators’ plotting mechanical and uneven. Dylan J. Sampson captures Brutus’ moral struggle to put Rome above personal admiration for Caesar, yet he never fully convinces as the conspiracy’s leader. His internal conflict is clear, but the stakes don’t truly land until his tragic trajectory intersects with Antony’s explosive rise, turning what feels muddled into gripping, emotionally charged drama.
Until Gabriel’s impressive turn snaps the story to life, no one seems to be having much fun on stage or generating much of an inner life to go with their lines, with the notable exceptions of Michele Schultz’s Casca and Jack Kleen and Shane Weikel in various roles.
That gives this Glen Kelman–directed production two very different personalities. The first half drifts, more cerebral than dramatic — tension existing on paper, but the stage action often failing to ignite. Characters plot, argue and agonize, yet without the energy needed to heighten the stakes. The result is to sap the vitality needed to make Shakespeare’s words compelling. After Gabriel’s Antony takes the stage, however, the production comes alive. His speech transforms grief and confusion into spectacle, emotion and power, turning abstract political scheming into visceral drama. The audience finally sees the consequences of Caesar’s assassination play out in real time, and the energy shifts, performances sharpen and stakes rise.
It also makes the play eerily compelling. Antony embodies the instincts of modern media, emotional manipulation and political theater, his actions demonstrating how public opinion can be shaped and performance can outweigh principle — qualities that make the play feel uncannily relevant today. In Gabriel’s hands, Antony lingers over Caesar’s wounds, repeats key phrases like “Brutus is an honorable man” to sow doubt, and frames each line and gesture to provoke the crowd — not unlike a viral meme, a trending hashtag, or a presidential administration bent on turning grief and facts into spectacle — demonstrating the same showmanship, emotional appeals and narrative control that feel disconcertingly familiar today.
The one thing Antony lacks — and what prevents even Shakespeare’s prescient play about ambition, loyalty and political upheaval from achieving razor-sharp precision — is force. His power stems from words — and from those eager to act on them. Now give him the power of a 21st century mass military to impose that will abroad and at home, and you no longer have rhetoric shaping events: you have spectacle backed by force, propaganda with teeth and democracy reduced to performance enforced at gunpoint.
Long Beach Shakespeare Company at the Helen Borger Theater, 4250 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm Sun., 2 pm, added show, Thurs. Feb. 5, dark, Fri., Feb. 6; thru Feb. 7. Lbshakespeare.org. Running time: approximately two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.
