There is a very distinct stylistic flourish to the Icarus production of Julius Caesar. It’s not just the futuristic Star Wars gothic costumes and make-up. It's also there in what they call “creative captioning” in which multiple surfaces are used to project the name of the character speaking and the words they use in surtitles. These captions will accompany the individual across a room.
Even a couple of the characters are projected into the show. Caesar himself only ever appears as a pre-recorded presence, even when he is being stabbed multiple times by the rebels. Given the production also includes swiping gestures to remove messages, they may have wanted us to regard the digital Caesar (William Travis) as a populist product of social media, though unfortunately he never makes any public speeches.
Ironically, the usual corrupt rabble-rousing speech by Mark Anthony is delivered almost conversationally by James Heatlie to a conventional in-person crowd in such an understated manner that it has about as much rabble-rousing incitement as Rishi Sunak.
However, the entire cast confidently delivers the text clearly. The trouble is the production is too keen on novelties to take a political stance on what is going on or explore the different impacts these events have on characters. Surely the decision to cast someone to play the most influential rebel, Brutus (Rowan Winter), as a woman referred to as she, married to a woman, should have had some implications.
Did anyone really catch the reasons why the rebellion might be necessary or the disagreements over tactics? We even lose small telling political details that generally amuse, such as Caesar's claimed distrust of Cassius who saved his life because “He is a great observer and he looks / Quite through the deeds of men: he reads much.”
Some of the novelties, such as gender-conscious casting, are welcome if we can see the conscious point being made, and other novelties, such as the surtitles, will aid for instance those with hearing loss and those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s style, but I can’t help but wish they would have concentrated more on a clearer depiction of characters and the political content of this political play.