Lincoln Center Festival

Julius Caesar

There's a visceral and even sometimes thrilling savagery inherent in Lucy Bailey's staging of Julius Caesar , which the Royal Shakespeare Company is now performing in rep at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. It's certainly a robust interpretation, but in overly concentrating on the ambience of the production, Bailey and the company often lose sight of the human drama that propels the Bard's Roman tragedy.

There's little question that the opening sequence that Bailey has added for the show is unforgettable. Two filthy, loinclothed young men, Rome's mythical founders Romulus (Tunji Kasim) and Remus (Joseph Arkley), claw, bite and wrestle, grunting like animals, to the death. This is, without a doubt, a city and empire established on a foundation of murderous bloodlust.

Equally powerful is Bailey's staging of the play's first scene, in which the citizens of Rome are celebrating the victory that Caesar (Greg Hicks) has had over Pompey. As rose petals waft down onto the stage from the rafters, public officials flog the revelers into submission. The action onstage is complemented by black and white video (from scenic and video designer William Dudley), which shows other celebrants refracted in mirror images, giving the sense -- in a Busby Berkeley fashion -- of a cast of thousands.

It's a chaotic and cruel vision for the world and in some instances, most notably when Caesar is assassinated in the Senate. There's a bloodhirsty frenzy to the way in which the conspirators, including Cassius (John Mackay) and finally Brutus (Sam Troughton) lunge and fly at their victim. Similarly, once war has broken out over control of Rome, the production surges with fierceness as clanging swords and shields echo through the theater, and once again, the action on stage is augmented by Dudley's fine video work.

But unfortunately, the moments that come in between these scenes of testosterone-filled brutality are stretches of intense human drama and astonishing political rhetoric that underwhelms, given the surface interpretations of the central characters.

Troughton (recovering from an injury incurred in another of the company's productions) delivers an entirely credible turn as Brutus, speaking the text well and bursting with fury as the action becomes more fraught, but the actor rarely manages to communicate the man's conflicted intellectual life.

Lincoln (Center Festival) Log | Sunday Arts | THIRTEEN

Last weekend, and indeed, being mere feet from the performers heightened the immersive visceral experience. An added benefit was to be able to be close enough to the gorgeously tailored costumes to discern the respective textures of the varying, predominantly black textiles and leathers.

The construction of the theater centered around a thrust stage, was an amazing feat of design and construction taking a little over two weeks (time lapse video here ). The familiar proportions allowed original sets and blocking to be used. The tinker-toy parts and production elements were stuffed into more than 40 shipping containers, some of which formed the stage structure; the remainder sit behind for accessible storage. It’s a fabrication of pure genius and practicality, not to mention the elegant, minimal railway station-inspired design, which epitomizes “form follows function.” The performance, directed by RSC Artistic Director Michael Boyd and featuring Jonjo O’Neill and Katy Stephens, was vibrant, physical, and down to earth.

Across the park at the Met, the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) followed hot on the heels of ABT’s season, begging comparison and mild confusion (Diana Vishneva is a principal with both troupes, and it performed two ballets by Alex Ratmansky, choreographer in residence at ABT, to music by Rodion Shchedrin). The story of Anna Karenina —with its social settings, romantic tensions and trains—might have great appeal on paper, but its essentially internal psychological machinations proved resistant choreographic subject matter, even for the resourceful Ratmansky. Vishneva, opposite Yuri Smekalov’s Vronsky (who, interestingly, was Vronsky in Boris Eifman’s 2005 version of Karenina , however, is all about colorful characters and exotic settings, with constructivist designs by Maxim Isayev. The fable seems cobbled together with plotlines plucked out of a hat, but no matter. It’s great fun, featuring horses, tsars, gypsies, sea horses, firebirds, and of course, scads of townsfolk. Ratmansky excels in narrative and describing characters with movement, and you can feel his confident choreographic hand in the playful ballet language, mime and relationships. It’s the danced version of gathering around a campfire and hearing a riveting story. Vladimir Shklyarov endearingly portrayed Ivan as a youth evolving into a man, and Viktoria Tereshkina made a strong, sweet tsar maiden (whatever that is). Smekalov, all line, added spice as the jester-like Gentleman, and Yekaterina Kondaurova displayed her gorgeous feet and technique in an underwater trio.