All the King's Men

In Roman times Julius Caesar was famously murdered when he wouldn’t play ball with the powers that be. Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men found a modern equivalent for Caesar in the story of the rise and fall of Huey Long, the legendary governor of Louisiana. In Robert Rossen’s l949 Academy Award winning film, Broderick Crawford plays the character. But who today will act out the myth of the populist hero who becomes corrupted by power? Though probably more political than idealistic, Lyndon Johnson was, for example, a perfect example of the New Deal politician who became a major power broker—to quote the title of another book written by the prominent biographer of Johnson’s life, Robert Caro. Treachery and behind the scenes deal making is, of course, the nether side of our democratic process and what unfortunately makes it interesting. Who wouldn’t rather read a book about Huey Long than one say about a pleasantly equanimitous governor like Mario Cuomo? "As a governor, that is my job every day is to turn the aspirational into the operational," Chris Christie recently told CNN--which might have been fodder, but the governor of New Jersey seems to be in no danger of attaining mythic status. Ted Cruz is cracking up to be a good candidate not for president, but for a book about behind the scenes hardball playing. Prematurely announcing Ben Carson’s retirement from the race to voters attending the Iowa caucuses was the epitome of cut throat politics. And now we learn that he’s pulled one his own ads because a fetching actress in it turned out to have had a career in soft core. Add to that the impugning of his opponents faith ("The Devil in Ted Cruz," NYT, 2/23/16). Donald Trump has famously written his own book Trump: The Art of the Deal but he needs his Jack Burden, the journalist narrator of All the King’s Men. Who will be his Boswell? The story has color and glamour, but somehow lacks the gravity of either the Robert Penn Warren novel, or Caro’s non-fiction work. Trump’s legacy will probably result in the creation of many books, but what's lacking in this tale is the presence of a truly great figure. Trump is the rare example of a larger than life character with, to decontextualize the title of Eldridge Cleaver’s autobiography, a Soul on Ice.

Mark Rylance’s Richard III

Mark Rylance is out to make his mark as one of the greats, a Kean, a Garrick, a Booth, but he is also trying to be something more. He is both acting and exfoliating. In the Shakespeare's Globe production of Richard III, currently playing in repertoire with Twelfth Night at the Belasco the audience is allowed to come early and see the actors getting dressed and in the course of the play, Rylance himself steps in and out of his role, seemingly at will. During one recent performance an audience member sitting in the Elizabethan Gallery, built on stage, literally collapsed and fell out of her seat. Rylance played the moment with consummate tact, rejoining with “as I was saying,” when it became apparent that she was alright. We’ve recently had the all female Donmar Warehouse production of Julius Caesar at St Ann’s Warehouse. This Richard III is all male, which is the way it was originally done in Elizabethan times, with one exception. The Elizabethans weren’t drag queens. Here we have Richard’s mother as a mammy with an oversized rear end. Richard’s wife Ann looks like a character out of the Addams Family. This production could have been called The Comedy of Richard III  and staged by Charles Ludlam and his Ridiculous Theatrical Company, were Ludlam still alive. And while it gives Rylance the opportunity to exhibit the full range of his comic skills including those of a master of ceremonies, a ham, stand up comedian and sometime Uriah Heap, it sometimes detracts from the tragedy. It is only in the final act that Tim Carroll, who directed, really tackles the question of the self-abnegation which has created a tyrant and monster. One sometimes forgets that Shakespeare created a character who hated himself, almost as much as he was despised. You have to take a breathe but by the end, in a fourth down drive, Rylance settles back in his character and gives us back the Richard, we have always known and despised— in his all his horror.

Julius Caesar at BAM

        photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Saul Bellow once raised eyebrows in the multi-cultural wars by asking “who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” (“Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89,” NYT, 4/6/05).  The Royal Shakespeare production of Julius Caesar, which just completed a run at BAM, could have been a great riposte, if one inserted Shakespeare in the place of Tolstoy. If only it had taken the bull by the horns. Why not employ the Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary approach? What about doing what The Royal Shakespeare Company did when they collaborated with the Wooster Group on Troilus and Cressida? What if Chinua Achebe had written an adaptation? As it stands, the production is weighted heavily towards a straight rendition of Shakespeare set against a generalized view of African culture and history that's lacking in any specific referents. Why insert an African setting if you are not going to do anything with it? The production notes actually remark “You could be forgiven for thinking that William Shakespeare and Nelson Mandela have absolutely nothing in common” and go on to mention the fact that The Complete Works of William Shakespeare were smuggled to Mandela in prison and that one of the passages that spoke to him famously uttered by Caesar himself that begins,  “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once. ” Apart from this allusion to the tortured history of South Africa in the playbill, it’s disappointing that the current production fails to employ Shakespeare’s study of tyranny in the service of say the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo—as one iconic example of Congolese history that's ripe for interpretation. The great lines “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” “the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, But in ourselves,” “et tu, Brute?--Then fall Caesar!” are all perfectly rendered. However, Gregory Duran’s directorial concept actually ends up obfuscating the otherwise powerful performances by Jeffery Kissoon (Julius Caesar), Paterson Joseph, (Marcus Brutus), Ray Fearon (Mark Anthony) and Cyril Nri (Caius Cassius).