But of course Shakespeare is far more than a librettist, and so this emphasis on the mise-en-scene over language and character comes at a price. While Nauzyciel’s ‘‘Caesar’’ is rarely dull to look at, and while its JFK-era setting is clearly trying to make some comment on current American politics, it is too often tiresome to sit through and unclear about whatever political point it is trying to make.
Riccardo Hernandez’s set, dominated by a photographically precise rendering of the empty ART seats on the back wall, wittily provokes us to consider just who’s acting and who’s watching here. It also evolves in bold and striking ways to support Nauzyciel’s conception of the play, which has its characters acting out their stories in some kind of dreamworld or, possibly, an afterlife.
The problem is that the same care has not been lavished on bringing meaning to every line and depth to every characterization. Effortlessly hip ’60s costumes (skinny ties, Jackie-esque gowns), mid-mod furnishings, and a cleverly metaphorical set design can take you only so far. If the words don’t come alive and the actors aren’t free to show us why they act as they do, our brains and hearts check out even as our eyes continue to admire.
Some of our detachment, it’s true, may be Shakespeare’s fault. ‘‘Julius Caesar’’ contains some famous set pieces and classic rhetoric — Cassius’s persuasion of the reluctant Brutus, Caesar’s assassination in the Capitol, Mark Antony’s funeral oration — but as a play it is less fully fleshed out, less undeniably three-dimensional in its portraits of flawed human beings, than the greater works that would follow. Even Brutus (the play’s real center, despite its title) never seems as complex or convincing as Hamlet and Lear.
