Julius Caesar

In the hard, grim surroundings of a women’s prison, the all-female actors in Phyllida Lloyd’s bold production of Julius Caesar play inmates and guards performing an explosive, arresting production of Shakespeare’s most famous discourse on power, loyalty, and tragic idealism. While all-male productions of Shakespeare’s plays restaged in contemporary settings are common, in the hands of this cast, led by Harriet Walter as Brutus, Frances Barber as Caesar, Jenny Jules as Cassius, and Cush Jumbo as Mark Antony, Shakespeare’s themes are glaringly and touchingly heightened by the backdrop of female incarceration, a live thrash metal band, and the emotional nuances inherent to women playing men at their most vulnerable.