Review: Lend Your Ears to Smith Street Stage's "Julius Caesar"

Julius Caesar

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Jonathan Hopkins

Assistant Director: Sundiata Fotso-Chinjé

Presented by Smith Street Stage at Carroll Park

President St., Brooklyn, NYC

May 16-June 7, 2026

Photography by Sam Sulam
Summer means Shakespeare in NYC, and of all of the productions to choose from, Smith Street Stage’s annual offerings in Carroll Park, Brooklyn are always a must-see. Even on an unseasonably cool and damp night, this year’s offering, Julius Caesar, has the power to captivate not only those who came to see it intentionally but also dog walkers and other passersby. If Shakespeare’s time seems remote from our own, the Romans who feature in this play were four times as removed from Elizabethan England as Elizabethan England from today. And yet, as Shakespeare made Julius Caesar speak to its contemporaries, so does Smith Street Stage for us today.

Featuring both Smith Street Stage veterans and newcomers, the cast is extraordinarily versatile. Save for a handful of actors, nearly everyone is double or triple cast, moving back and forth between roles seamlessly and convincingly. This flexibility is especially evident with Noelle Franco and Nowani Rattray, who move in back-to-back scenes from playing Portia and Calpurnia making impassioned pleas to their husbands Brutus and Caesar to conspirators involved in the latter’s assassination. Also noteworthy in this regard is Alaysia Duncan’s performance as both conspirator Cinna and later, in an exceptionally powerful performance, Octavius Caesar, and Xueyun (Harry) Zhai playing the cobbler in the opening scene, Brutus’s servant Lucius, and Caesar loyalist Artemidorus, among others.

If it has been long debated that Brutus, not Caesar, is the protagonist of this play, Amara James Aja (Brutus), Bryce Foley (Antony), and Katie Willmorth (Cassius) are all strong contenders in his production, both for their individual performances and their interactions with each other and the rest of the cast, particularly Aja and Willmorth with the other conspirators. As Antony, Foley delivers the pivotal funeral oration with the pacing and cadence of a sermon, making the plebians’ anger a kind of resounding amen. And though he has far less stage time than these three, Louis Butelli’s Julius Caesar is a character both winning and infuriating who renders Brutus’s turmoil at the rightness of the assassination entirely believable.

But as much as these singular characters, the plebian crowd features prominently in this play. The production creatively uses the whole space of the park to embody the crowd as a kind of absent presence, not on the stage but very much part of the play nonetheless. In the opening scene between Brutus and Cassius, the sounds of the crowd as Caesar refuses the crown three times can be heard from one of the park’s entrances, inexplicable until explained by Casca later on. During the aforementioned funeral oration, the crowd was at a distance behind the audience, a disconcerting voice in the darkening gloom. The Republic that the conspirators ostensibly attempt to save through Caesar’s assassination gives way to the Empire, but the voice and sway of the people remain—a timely lesson, among others, that this production proffers to its contemporary audience.

-Stephanie Pietros

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: "How To Eat an Orange" Cuts into the Life of an Argentine Artist and Activist

Image
How To Eat an Orange Written by Catherine Filloux Based on the writing of Claudia Bernardi Directed by Elena Araoz Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club at The Downstairs at La MaMa 66 E 4th St., Manhattan, NYC May 30-June 16, 2024 Paula Pizzi. Photo by Steven Pisano How To Eat an Orange , making its world premiere at La MaMa, does in fact include a real orange as a prop, and its multifarious symbolizations–evoking at different points cultural specificity, family history, matriarchal inheritance, and even a skull–are representative of the play's boundary-blurring, non-linear presentation of memory. The memories in question belong to visual artist, educator, and activist Claudia Bernardi , who lived through several years of her native Argentina's military junta, which held power from 1976 to 1983, before departing her country and eventually settling in the United States. How To Eat an Orange , from Catherine Filloux, a French Algerian American award-winning playwright,...
Read more

Review: The Immersive "American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams" Takes Audiences on a Marvelously Crafted Journey

Image
American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Jim Niesen Presented by the Irondale Ensemble Project at The Space at Irondale 85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NYC October 27-November 26, 2023 Shadenia Savid in Moony's Kids Don't Cry . Photo by Natasha Rotondaro In 1948, Tennessee Williams published American Blues , a collection of five one-act plays, and a remarkable new production of this collection by Brooklyn's Irondale shows that these works have lost none of their power to both entertain and challenge audiences in the intervening three-quarters of a century. Comprising plays written in the decade between 1936 and 1946 - Moony's Kids Don't Cry (1936); The Dark Room (1939); The Case of the Crushed Petunias (1941); The Long Stay Cut Short, or, the Unsatisfactory Supper (1946); and Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1946) - American Blues represents the second part of Irondale's American Century, the first install...
Read more

Review: From Child Pose to Stand(ing) Up: "Yoga with Jillian" and "Penguin in Your Ear" at the Women in Theatre Festival

Image
Yoga with Jillian Written by Lia Romeo Directed by Andrew W. Smith Presented by Project Y Theatre and Richard Jordan Productions in association with The Pleasance June 2-17, 2023 Penguin in Your Ear Written and performed by Eliza Bent Directed by Jess Barbagallo June 10, 2023 Part of the Women in Theatre Festival , presented by Project Y Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres Michole Biancosino. Photo courtesy of Project Y Theatre This June, Project Y Theatre Company presents the eighth annual installment of its Women in Theatre Festival (WIT), which showcases new work by women and maintains "more than 50% female representation of all artists involved." This year, the festival includes a lobby installation project, titled In the Betweens , from scenic designer Chen-Wei Liao, through which audience members pass on their way into the theater proper. One first chooses first between "light" and "dark" rooms and then moves into "the gardens" before re...
Read more