Julius Caesar - Royal Shakespeare Company, Noel Coward Theatre, review

Julius Caesar is the greatest political play ever written, shockingly clear-eyed about the futility of power and the fickleness of public opinion, but its steel is all too often blunted by theatrical productions. Typically these fill the stage with groups of huddled, mysteriously aggrieved conspirators whose personalities remain buried within their togas. So it is to Gregory Doran’s credit that his RSC production – transferring to the West End after an acclaimed run in Stratford – avoids the deathtrap of setting Julius Caesar in what looks like a Roman museum.

Less clear is whether Doran has done the right thing by transporting the play to Africa. He burdens his British black cast with African accents and dresses Caesar in the kind of safari suit favoured by Idi Amin. Lest the point is missed, a vast head of Caesar looms over the stage, the clearest visual allusion to Lenin, Saddam Hussein and others of similar dictatorial bent.

In one sense, the African republic setting – conjured by a simple assemblage of monumental stone steps – does bear dividends. Because this society feels recognisable and all too real, we experience the jeopardy of the situation. There is a telling moment when Jeffery Kissoon, excellent as Caesar, moves from bonhomie to a sudden delivery of the line: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.” Cyril Nri, an intense and emotional Cassius, is frightened half to death by the thought that Caesar might command his elimination on the whimsical grounds that he doesn’t eat enough.

And yet there is something vaguely meretricious about all this fear and tension. While it undeniably infuses the drama with urgency, it also leads the production astray. The whole point of Julius Caesar is that its name character is not, in fact, the tyrant of the conspirators’ imaginings; nor is his assassination a justifiable act, except in the envious and conflicted minds of men like Cassius and Brutus (played by Paterson Joseph, intriguingly, as a wrong-headed neurasthenic rather than the noblest Roman of them all).

In other words, the unambiguous context of the African setting has the effect of stripping the play – and its characters – of much of their ambiguity. The constant hysteria feels like a blanket of noise smothering Shakespeare’s subtlety and cynicism. This is a great shame, since there is a huge amount of talent on stage, with Ray Fearon’s Mark Antony a charismatic stand-out.

Until Sept 15, then touring