Julius Caesar is one of several plays written by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) based on ancient Roman history. With such a title, you’d expect Julius to be a ubiquitous character, but he actually appears in only three scenes; it’s far more about the inner conflicts of Marcus Brutus. It’s interesting to note that The Bard’s 1590s period—in which his characterizations achieve more depth and his writing style fluctuates between poetry and prose—is bookended by two outstanding tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Both are timeless tales that have never left the world’s stages—the former a tragic story of young, forbidden love, and the latter one of treachery and betrayed friendship.
For his main source, Shakespeare went to Sir Thomas North’s 1579 English translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. In doing so, Shakespeare found a fascinating account from history seemingly tailor made for the dramatic stage, and in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, as scholar James Shapiro observed, “the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events—even Shakespeare’s own reflections on the act of writing—began to infuse each other.”
Milwaukee’s “Shakespeare in the Park” this August will feature a dozen performances of Julius Caesar over three weekends. The Optimist Theatre production will be co-directed by M.L. Cogar and Tom Reed, and star Allen Edge in the title role. This will be Edge’s Shakespeare in the Park debut, but he brings with him a long history of acting with the Bronzeville Arts Ensemble.
“We hope to create a production of Julius Caesar that is a political thriller, bridging the public and the personal, exposing the moment when idealism falls to ego and anxiety,” Reed says. As Cogar adds (reflecting upon this year’s momentous elections), “We look to Shakespeare to help us measure the human and the historical scale of the choices we make in such moments.”
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Optimist Theatre’s Julius Caesar runs Aug. 4-21 at the Selig-Joseph-Folz Amphitheater in Kadish Park, 308 E. Lloyd St. For more information, visit optimisttheatre.org.
Theater Happenings:
The Wizard of Oz
West Community Theatre
18695 W. Cleveland Ave., New Berlin
Aug. 5-14
We’ve all seen the famous film version of The Wizard of Oz from 1939 and perhaps also The Wiz, but not too many of us have seen it live on stage. Debuting at West PAC in New Berlin three years ago with Nunsense, West Community Theatre has ever since performed several popular musicals (Little Shop of Horrors, Oliver!) and youth theater productions as well. For The Wizard of Oz, they’ve assembled a mixed-age cast of some 50 actors, a crew of 15 and a 30-piece orchestra for those wonderful songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.
Jake Revolver: Freelance Secret Agent
The Village Playhouse
Inspiration Studio
1500 S. 73rd St.
Aug. 5-21
Writer, producer and actor Matthew Konkel’s previous works, I Want You to Know (2008), The Bully (2011) and Neptune (2015), are all films. Now we have his latest piece—an intriguing, comedic stage work titled Jake Revolver: Freelance Secret Agent. As Village Playhouse says of the title character: “Wherever there’s a right needing to be wronged, he’ll be there. Wherever there’s food needing to be eaten, he’ll have a fork.”
