SOURCE: Carnegy, Patrick. Review of Julius Caesar. Spectator 287, no. 9026 (4 August 2001): 42-3.

In the following review, Carnegy praises Edward Hall's 2001 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar, particularly its portrayal of the conspirators, rather than Caesar, as the greater threat to Rome.

Not so long ago Ruggiero Raimondi arrived at Covent Garden to sing, as he had often done elsewhere, the title role in Verdi's Attila. An early call was to the costume department where he genially introduced himself as the Hun: ‘Well, what's it to be this time? Hitler or Mussolini?’ The same question has hovered over modern stagings of Julius Caesar going back at least as far as Death of a Dictator, Orson Welles's legendary rehash of 1937, when Caesar was indeed Mussolini and the crowd scenes Nazi rallies. Since then the Roman colossus has suffered further resurrections as General de Gaulle (RSC 1968), Fidel Castro (Miami 1986) and, played...