SOURCE: Weber, Bruce. “The Politics of the Toga Era, Big, Bold, and Often Bloody.” The New York Times (21 August 2000): E1.

In the following excerpted review of Barry Edelstein's stage adaptation of Julius Caesar for the New York Shakespeare Festival, Weber finds the production as a whole to be rather unmoving. Additionally, Weber observes that individual performances—with the exception of Jeffrey Wright's commanding interpretation of Marc Antony—focused on obvious overt personality traits rather than internal emotional and psychological struggles.

With a busy percussionist pounding out portents, thunderclaps and sounds of war; a massive set of defaced, slightly skewed cement walls and an enormous disembodied hand to suggest a city shaken by cataclysm; a cast that plays the entire evening in a state of high dudgeon; and the whole production watched over by a mammoth, gold-painted bust of David McCallum (who plays the title role) dangling from a...