NCC brings in production of ‘Julius Caesar’

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The Acting Company presents William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” Feb. 11 at North Central College. | Courtesy of NCC

Updated: February 6, 2012 7:07PM

One of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies will be performed in Naperville.

The Acting Company, in association with The Guthrie Theater, presents “Julius Caesar” Feb. 11 at North Central College. The performance begins at 8 p.m. in Pfeiffer Hall.

“Julius Caesar” is based on events of the ancient Roman emperor.

“A lot of people think Julius Caesar is the main part, but Brutus is the main character,” said director Rob Melrose.

Julius Caesar has just returned from defeating Pompey, only he returns to find dissention within his ranks.

“Cassius and other senators form a plot to kill Julius Caesar,” he said. “Brutus is the most respected of the conspirators, so it’s a most difficult decision for him to go along with the conspirators. There’s a lot of soul-searching on his part. He ultimately decides that even though Caesar is his friend, it’s better for Rome if Caesar dies because his worry is Caesar might become a tyrant. The reasons aren’t solid, because Caesar hasn’t done anything terrible, but he gets killed anyway.”

Brutus lets Caesar’s friend Mark Antony speak at Caesar’s funeral, which the conspirators are against.

“It turns out by letting Mark Antony speak at the funeral, he is able to get people to riot against the conspirators and the conspirators have to flee Rome, and it starts another civil war,” he said. This is an exciting time to perform this play, Melrose said, because it’s such a politically divided time.

“In the 1980s, everybody talked about voter apathy. No one cared about politics and no one was very passionate about politics,” he said. “Now it seems whether you’re with the Tea Party or Obama or Occupy Wall Street, people are very involved and passionate about politics again. It’s an election cycle and it’s an exciting time to do it.”

This is a modern-dress production of “Julius Caesar,” so it will look very much like a contemporary play.

“We’re kind of taking Hamlet’s lesson that he feels like the theater should hold a mirror up to nature, so we’re doing a production that should look and feel very much like today,” he said. “It is exciting and audiences have been responding very well to it. The other reason we’re doing this play is because a lot of young people are going to be seeing this production. We didn’t want it to feel like a history lesson; we wanted it to be a story that young people could relate to and they’ll see people up on stage that look like real people to them. And quite simply, so they can tell which character is which. When everyone’s in togas, it kind of looks like a big sea of white.”

And if he’s being honest, he wants to win over a few converts. He’s already heard from people who tell him they hate Shakespeare and never understood what was going on. It’s when these people approach him afterwards to tell him they actually understood the play that he feels like he’s doing his job.

“For me, that is the biggest victory. I want people who think they don’t like Shakespeare to all of a sudden realize, ‘Oh, if I understand what’s happening in the play, I really enjoy it.’”

But beware: this isn’t one of Shakespeare’s happy comedies or love stories.

“It’s really meaty. At the same time, what people don’t realize is that so many of the lines in the play (are ones) they’ve heard before,” he said. “‘It’s Greek to me,’ ‘Beware the Ides of March,’ ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen,’ ‘Et tu, Brute,’ A lot of the lines in the play are part of our speech now, and they all started in ‘Julius Caesar’. It’s some of Shakespeare’s best debate, some of his very best rhetoric. I also thought it would be fun to premier it at a time where we’re listening to political speeches every night to be reminded of what Shakespeare was like as a speech writer. For people to make that connection, I think is kind of fun.”

The costume is modern dress, but the language is pure Bard.

“It’s still Julius Caesar. It’s still Shakespeare’s language. It’s still a play about historical events. We’re just doing it in a way that makes it clear to a contemporary audience.”

The audience reaction is better than what he’s hoped it would be. The Acting Company travels around the country and often goes to places that aren’t normally exposed to Shakespeare, he said.

“I feel like this is a wonderful opportunity to get people who don’t normally think of themselves as Shakespeare lovers to become converts,” he said.

The Acting Company is a well-respected touring troupe, and he auditioned “hundreds of actors” before selecting his cast.

“People can expect some really engaging performances,” he said. “These actors are some of the most talented in the country, and they speak the language beautifully and do a wonderful job. They can expect a very fast-moving and short ‘Julius Caesar.’ When we do it, it’s under two hours. It’s not going to be a long night for people. We wanted it to be lean and mean.”