The new production of "Julius Caesar" not only has everyone in modern dress (zzzzz, as if that hasn't been done so many, many times before) but features a DONALD TRUMP LOOK-ALIKE as the leader who deserves to be killed. Well, in the photo he looks more like Conan O'Brien.
Look, let's be reasonable. Even in theater, where we suspend disbelief for drama, it's outrageous to have Donald/Julius stabbed by his own black, gay and female staff. He doesn't have any. If I remember correctly, Julius Caesar was betrayed by Brutus and the rest of his staffers. Trump is going to be killed by silly Sean Spicer, pious Mr. Pence, and his own son-in-law Jared Kushner?? Not likely, and black, gay and female versions are even more ridiculous.
Just recently, across the pond, Robert Hastie gained huzzahs for HIS production of "Julius Caesar," which featured somebody with Down syndrome, a whole lotta gays and blacks, and Cassius now played by a woman. Or was it a transgender woman? This thrilled the reviewer from The Guardian, and put Sheffield on the map. Sheffield is where you go to see crap that would never make it at the West End in London.
The great thing about this Manhattan production, over the one in Sheffield, is that it's a lot easier to get to, and it's FREEEEEE.
The tradition with "Shakespeare in the Park" is that it gives poor people a chance to see culture. That's poor people from Brooklyn who can only afford to wear the same porkpie hipster hat every day. That's poor people from the Upper West Side who need to save their money for a Zabar's lox and bagel. That's poor people from the Upper East Side who aren't used to walking anywhere and can't get the maid to bring out the baby carriage and trundle them into the middle of Central Park.
While FREEEEEEE is always a great way to gain attendance to "Shakespeare in the Park," it does help if there's tricked up gimmicks, edgy re-workings, and total outrage. Having a Trump look-alike stabbed got them lots of publicity. Why, it even has been mentioned on...blogs.
One thing "Shakespeare in the Park" is not likely to do, is an all-male production. In Shakespeare's day, women were not encouraged to appear on stage. But, listen, you can have a Transgender Macbeth. You can have a Chinese Hamlet. You can have a Muslim Shylock. But you'd be going way too far by having an all-male Shakespeare production with a few guys in drag. Guys in drag are, after all, going to hurt the feelings of transgenders.
If you're a real New Yorker, you've NEVER attended one of these shows. First off, it's hot, humid and uncomfortable most any summer night in Manhattan, and it doesn't get better sitting on a bench with flies buzzing around your eyes, and your ears assailed by the sounds of sirens and airplanes and, worse, Shakespearean speech which does need subtitles.
Which is worse, the audience of "pay attention to me" wrapper-rattlers, plot-whisperers and pontificating toffee noses, or the "pay attention to me" bad actors who upstage each other thinking "this is my discovered by Scorsese moment."
The show about stabbing the President got a shot in the arm when some Joan Wilkes Booth rushed the stage trying to prevent and protest an assassination. Why, it was a plot twist worthy of Mamet.
The Lady in Question, who helped give the production publicity, quite rightly called attention to the rather unpatriotic idea that it's OK to wishfully hope the President of the United States gets murdered, and preferably by members of his own staff.
In America, you will face FBI or CIA scrutiny if you Tweet or mutter any kind of death threat involving the Commander in Chief. And yet, at the same time as Joan Rivers wanna-be Kathy Griffin posed with a bloody severed Trump head replica, this was considered acceptable entertainment.
No, oh Ye who don't remember, Gore Vidal's "Evening with President Nixon" didn't imply that killing him would be a good idea. If Vidal was around now, he'd probably sneer that popular culture had reached a new low in taste. When some film studio thought it would be a great idea to title a comedy "The Pope Must Die," this was quickly overruled. But that was back in 1991. What is it about the 21st Century, and now, 2017, that makes assassination a credible subject for an evening's amusement? Should Sondheim's "Assassins" be re-staged with every President re-fitted with Trump rubber masks?
And so we have another season of "Shakespeare in the Park," and this one imagining Trump being murdered.
This production takes place in Central Park: CENTRAL PARK where THREE, count 'em, THREE dead bodies were found in three different man-made lakes in the past THREE weeks. Eh, so what. Homeless men, most likely? Their endings were not amusing at all, so forget they existed and don't care too much who they were or how they died.
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