Loud And Proud And Also Loud: Julius Caesar In Dumbo

A few weeks ago, I took in a bit of Shakespeare near the Brooklyn waterfront, screwing my bladder to the sticking place along the way.  My review of the Donmar Warehouse's production of Julius Caesar is up today at Howlround, and you can read it if you like.

In the teeming yard of an English prison, a convict named Brutus tries to get the attention of a gang of joggers. He speaks of love and honor and fairness, finally winning their approval with a simple question: "Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves," he asks them, "than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men?" From the vantage of the prison yard, a single death is a small price for freedom. But as Brutus and his throng soon learn, the transaction is not so simple.

The Donmar Warehouse's Julius Caesar premiered in London last December, and has been imported to Brooklyn to play in a warehouse of our own: St. Ann's, a half a block from the East River in Dumbo. This all female production, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is set in a women's prison, and uses that harsh setting to remake itself into a meditation on the nature of freedom. Compelling but flawed, it is a fine example of the benefits and drawbacks that come with using Shakespeare to make a point about something larger than the play itself.

I walked away from that production feeling very good about it, and wrote the review in that mood. But this was not a love that lasted. The more I thought about the production's noisy tricks, the less I was impressed. Most of the acting was superb, and the first half of the play—when the production's premise was still unclear—was discomfiting in an interesting way. But what's stuck with me over the last couple of weeks is the noisiness of the production, and the shallow flashiness that seemed design to deafen the audience and drown out the text.

I had complex feelings about this production, and wanted that to come through in the review, but reading over my words, I worry that they sound a little too sunny. There are very good things in this Julius Caesar, but they come in spite of the production itself. Even so, I'm glad I saw it, and I'm glad I spent the last two weeks wrestling with the way I felt about it. A perfect production (if there were such a thing) could never make you think the way an ambitious, badly flawed one can.

Questions of Comfort, At The Theater & In The Loo

The performance begins at 7:00 PM and runs 2 hours and 15 minutes without an intermission. . . . We strongly recommend that you use the restrooms at Brooklyn Roasting Company. The St. Ann’s Warehouse restrooms will only be available immediately prior to the start of the performance. For the safety of our audiences and actors, there will be no re-entry to the theater if you have to leave your seat during the performance. There will be no intermission. 

So I was informed this week by an email confirmation of a ticket to the Donmar's Julius Caesar, at St. Ann's Warehouse, which is playing this month just a half block for the East River. This is not a review of the performance—that will come on Howlround, I think, sometime this month—but rather of the particular bit of anxiety engendered by that email. 

 "Two hours fifteen?" it made me think. "No bathroom? Jeez."

(Be here warned that this post acknowledges certain facts of human biology—namely that sometimes men and women have to go to the bathroom.) 

I've been wary of theatrical bathroom problems since February, when I made the mistake of having a couple of beers before Good Person of Szechwan at La Mama. The beers ran right through me, as beers have a way of doing, and I spent the first act of that lovely show in squirming agony, like a five year-old on a road trip with Mitt "No Bathroom Breaks" Romney. Thankfully, that show had an intermission, and I was able to enjoy the second half in comfort. Julius Caesar would offer no such escape hatch. 

We are grown ups, of course, and can control our bladders, but that doesn't mean it's very much fun to do so. Coffee, tea, beer and cigarettes are all wonderful things to have before a play, and all are diuretics. Being told that you have to hold it for two hours plus, I think, is a mental diuretic as well. 

A few hours before curtain on Saturday, I set aside my tea, and looked away from any offers of beer. Water, I sipped sparingly. A trip to the theater had turned into the night before surgery. This proved moot, however, when I reached the theater, and found out that all of my nervous skittering had overlooked an important fact: my ticket was for Sunday, not Saturday. This was a particularly boneheaded mistake, as you could see if you looked at my datebook, which contained exactly one item for the entire week of Nov. 30 to Oct. 6: "Julius Caesar," it said, on Sunday. But who bothers looking at their datebook?

The front of house staff was gracious, and offered to seat me that night for the performance beginning an hour later than I had thought, but I decided I'd rather have my Saturday to myself, and went home. I repeated my procedure Sunday, scorning anything that might later cause a tickle in my bladder, and by the time I arrived at the gloomy Brooklyn waterfront, mouth and bladder were both stone dry. St. Ann's had set up a makeshift lobby inside the adjacent Brooklyn Roasting Company—a cruel gag for those who were about to have their restroom rights stricken—and the winding line for the bathrooms had the nervous buzz of the crowd waiting for the last helicopter out of Saigon. 

I waited by the river—where some civic art-minded goon had thoughtfully woven plastic strips through a chain link fence, obscuring the view of the skyline and Manhattan Bridge—and listened as the Pirates took a 3-2 lead over the Cardinals, on vital sacrifice fly. They were still leading when the Donmar company, dressed as prison wardens, herded us into the space. "There are toilet facilities on the left," they told us, "and we suggest you use them now." Truly, theatergoing is a romantic pursuit.  Behind me, a grizzled Englishman announced, "It's a fucking prison, shut the fuck up. I don't want to live the experience, I just want to watch it."

The auditorium had been given a jailhouse makeover. The seats were plastic, armless and hard, and the only air conditioning was a few ceiling fans which seemed to have no more than ceremonial value. I'm not usually one to whine about a theater, but the seats, heat and explicit prohibition of bathroomery perplexed me. Where is the line between pampering your audience and abusing them? How long can a play get before the value gained by not having an intermission is outweighed by the distracting effects of stiff backs, jittery legs, and overfull bladders? (90 minutes, as far as I'm concerned.)

The Donmar's Julius Caesar moves quickly, and 2:15—or actually 2:00 flat, since that :15 was built in to allow the crowd time to get settled—is wonderfully short Shakespeare. But in a play that breaks so easily into halves—"Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war" is as good an act-out as any in the canon—it seems silly to risk losing your plastic chair-tortured audience by refusing them a chance to stand and stretch their legs. The honorable deaths of Cassius and Brutus, it seems to me, will not make much of an impression on an audience member whose ass is numb.

It could be that I'm making something out of nothing. Last night's crowd survived intact, save for one man who was overcome just before Caesar's assassination, and scurried out towards the bathroom, never to return. When the lights went up at the end of the performance, the grizzled Englishman leapt to his feet, and let out a war whoop of approval. A good play can make you forget discomfort, and this Julius Caesar largely manages. It's a compelling production, but a fiendishly uncomfortable one. Leave your sweater at home, skip the coffee, and bring a bottle of water—to sip on, and never gulp.

At The Public, An Honored Brit Has The Time Of His Life

The Detroit riot of 1967 started in the wee hours of July 23rd, when police launched what was supposed to be a routine raid on an after-hours club, or "blind pig." Expecting an ordinary late night crowd, they stumbled onto an 82 person party given in honor of two returning Vietnam vets. Rather than back off, the police attempted to arrest the entire group, setting off a five day riot that left forty-three dead.

Yesterday, the Public Theater started previews for Detroit '67, a new play by Dominique Morisseau that begins during the run-up to the riot. A Public Lab production, ​Detroit '67 runs through March 17 before zipping uptown to the Classical Theatre of Harlem, where it will run March 19 to April 14. Set in one of Detroit's blind pigs, it offers political drama by way of family comedy, backed up by the kind of lush Motown soundtrack one would expect from after-hours Detroit. This morning, Astor Place Riot spoke to director Kwame Kwei-Armah, an Englishman who makes his home in Maryland, where he is the artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage.

What appeals to you about this play?

From page one, I was laughing my head off. By about page four, I wrote a note, "Please don't let this play be bad. I love this." Some plays do that—you read the first half and it's great, and then it all collapses. So first and foremost, the thing that attracted me was the wonderfulness of the script. Without that, there's nothing.

This play asks about why, in Detroit in '67, people reacted the way they did. Why was there this automatic combustion? But more importantly, it is a brother and sister play. One is a dreamer, and the other is a pragmatist, and the play beautifully explores how those tools both hinder or perpetuate one's life.

And it's got music! Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson—this brother and sister have quite the 8-track collection.

Correct! Oh my God. The truth is that we did a couple of workshops and readings of the play before we went into production, and I never used the music, because I didn't want any of us to think that somehow the music can save us. The music is the icing, but the play does 99.9—no, the play does 100% of its own work. I don't want people leaving the theater saying that the music was wonderful. They walked in knowing that the music was wonderful. They need to leave talking about the play that just punched them in the stomach.

And this is going up around the same time as Motown: The Musical. 

Yes! It is, isn't it? And the funny thing is, we share a costume designer.

I saw that you were made an OBE this year. Tell me a little about that, for Americans who might not be familiar with the honor.

Basically, it's the Queen's jubilee honors. Twice a year, the Queen invests and gives honor to people across Britain whose work—it's like your freedom medal, that the President gives. It's not just artists—it's a bit difficult to describe. It's the one they give you before you go to to Sir or Lord, if you continue to be a good boy. At Center Stage, we call it Knight Light.

How did it feel?

Magnificent. It's a tremendous honor. In fact, the day that it was announced in the media, I didn't say anything about it, and I got maybe five hundred hits on Facebook. It made me cry three times. The outpouring of love that I received—everyone should receive that in their lifetime, and not just at their funeral.

Why did Oskar and Mandy think you were right for this?

In Dominique and I's first meeting together, she asked the same question. I threw it back to her, asking, "Are you actually saying, 'Negro, what the hell does your British ass know about Detroit?'" And she laughed at that.

I think the reason is that, as a playwright, I had written a similar play. It's not similar in its dialogue, in its story, in anything that happens in it, but it is similar in theme. Oskar's brilliance is that he said, "I think you know where Detroit '67 is."

Oskar Eustis knows how to put people together.

And what a beautiful combination! I have had the time of my life. We really have developed the play over the course of the year. One of the great things about Dominique—not only is she a wonderful writer, but she's a wonderful rewriter.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but I've had the time of my life. I'm a man of my theater. The Public does ten shows a year. I do seven. So it's not like I don't know what it takes, but I tell you, god the Public is run well. They know how to look after a writer, they know how to look after a director, they know how to look after a play. I've learned a lot, watching them, about how to run my own company.

Anything in particular?

New play development. How one invests in new plays. How one nurtures writers through the process. How one communicates. It's small things, but they made me go, "Uh-huh." Clarity of leadership, and clarity of communication about aims and objectives.

I'm seeing masters at work.