'Caesar' Goes Up in the Ex

Though the costumes and customs of Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s “Julius Caesar,” which opened yesterday and will run until tomorrow evening at the Loeb Ex, give the show a modern feel, these are not the only aspects that make the classic so applicable—the dialogue, which dates back hundreds of years, grapples with moral and social themes still prevalent today.

“It’s a play about trying to be a good person and a good politician,” director Alice Abracen ’15 says. The plot follows Marcus Brutus as he is lured into a conspiracy against Julius Caesar. Shakespeare’s tragedy questions violence in the name of justice and democracy itself, questions that Abracen says are especially relatable to Harvard students. “A lot of us feel very ambitious and will at some point be drawn to politics or at least leadership positions, and this is a play about what it takes to be a good leader.”

Unlike most productions of “Julius Caesar,” the politicians and leaders in Abracen’s rendition are not all men—Cassius (Lelaina E. Vogel ’15), the manipulative mover-and-shaker of the conspirators, is a woman.

“We believe that women can wield power just as effectively as men,” producer Alice F. Berenson ’16 says. This casting choice leads to commentary on the modern woman and raises the possibility of unrequited love between the now female Cassius and male Brutus.

“There is a lot of insinuation of some sort of relationship in the original Shakespearean verse between Cassius and Brutus, and since I [am] female, we decided to take that to a new height,” Vogel says. Though she would not go so far as to call Cassius a “seductress,” Vogel points out that modern women encounter gender conflicts in trying to attain power. “[Cassius] uses a lot more sexual energy to get her way, as, unfortunately, many women in politics have found themselves obliged to do,” Vogel says.

With its contemporary themes and newly explored undertones of love, Abracen’s “Julius Caesar” challenges the classic text by examining the script in depth and considering its modern-day questions.