When we go to the theater we must not let ourselves be seduced by the title, because we go to see a Julius Caesar believing that we will find a tragedy by Shakespeare and then we find ourselves faced with a comedy of witticisms in which they play with fiction and history and nowhere sees Shakespeare or tragedy, nor even the historical figure as we knew him.
The Portuguese Companhia do Chapitô does not deceive and presents its particular “Julius Caesar”, a collective theatrical creation based on the events of the life of this historical character, which they also reinvent with their comic language, so that the unconscious spectator cannot distinguish where to find the thing. historical and where the imagined.
We all know who Julius Caesar was, both in his civil and military aspects: a Roman general and statesman, member of the first triumvirate, who led the Roman armies in the conquest of Gaul, who later defeated his political rival, Pompey , in the context of civil war. He then proclaimed himself perpetual dictator of Rome, a position he held for a short time, when he was assassinated by a group of senators who considered him a threat to the Republic during the very famous Ides of March.
The Portuguese, inspired by history and legend, taking all the liberties they wanted in the construction of their comedy and abusing the “historical deviation”, what they come to show us is the demystification of a myth or, as they themselves say, “the desecration of a historical monster: Julius Caesar“. He presents himself as an antihero, a puppet, a caricature. It is not very clear to us whether what we are presented with is a tyrant who must die or a hero crudely murdered by Brutus and his conspiratorial acolytes. In any case, it seems that Julius Caesar and the brief allusions to the significant stages of his military and political life are a pure pretext to create a spectacle in which physicality full of dynamism and humor constitutes the essence.
In comedy it seems that there are no heroes or villains, there are circumstances and intelligent people who earn their living and there are also less intelligent ones who do what they are told; and alongside them, virtuous people who do what needs to be done. They don’t opt for one or the other, let’s say they try to present the question on egalitarian grounds and without moralizing. Between the historical, the documentary and the parody, the Companhia do Chapitô offers us an original and striking spectacle which must be decoded more in the sense of entertainment than in that of illustration.
Of course, they cite the triumvirate with Crassus and Pompeythe Gallic War, the battle of Pharsalus, the passage into Egypt with Marc Antony, the abandonment of Calpurnia or the Ides of March with the murder, but all this is offered through a grotesque parody of the different characters who, helped by The a minimum of narration with also its touch of humor, means that the spectators take it with grace and some smile and others burst out laughing. All this leads us to calmly reflect on the true story and to believe what the creative people want us to believe with their art, closer to the drawings of Asterix and Obelix than a serious historiographical treatise.
The gags follow one another in the work. One of them is remarkable when the actor who plays Brutus reproduces in his clownish style the hypnotic scene from the film The Great Dictator, in which Charles Chaplin It turns out to be a transcription of Hitler “playing” at kicking the globe. Another hilarious moment is the crossing of the Rubicon River by the troops commanded by Caesar or his romantic relationship with Cleopatra.
The purely theatrical context is minimalist: a completely empty stage, a grayish costume and a few elements to symbolically suggest that the character is Egyptian, Gallic or Roman or a silver glove which can make it clear that it is a armed. On the basis of this absence or these minimal references, the dramaturgy of collective creation develops where the physical work, whether individual or coordinated by the three actors, is the essence of a theatrical proposal which has a work profound on bodily expression, gesture and movement. Of course, it is a physical theater that uses the body to tell stories, often without the need for words and with an emphasis on gesture as the main means of expression, sometimes accompanied by simple sounds, independently of any text. The audience’s imagination is engaged and they construct the show thanks to the gestural stimuli of the three actors. The work is very visual and includes mime and even a type of dance or coordinated movement, which helps them express their emotions; These sometimes take on a comic aspect and we come close to pantomime. The ensemble forms its own magic, creating a unique way of connecting with the spectators, who also actively participate at some point in the performance.
The interpretive work carried out by Jorge Cruz, Pedro Diogo and Susana Nunes is superlative, because not only do they tell us various stories with their varied emotional registers, but with the same costumes and in the same stage circumstances, without any props, they are capable of embodying around twenty characters, making them perfectly perceptible to the spectators. Your work is excellent.
THE Companhia do Chapitô left on the stages of the Rojas Theater a sample of his great professionalism, his deep knowledge of the most varied theatrical techniques, his knowledge of the transmission of messages and emotions and his wonderful complicity with the public, which closed the room with long applause. .
Qualification:Julius Caesar. Author: Collective creation. Business: Companhia do Chapito. Address: José C. García and Claudia Nóvoa. Performers: JBarley Cruz, Pedro Diogo and Susana Nunes. Lightning: Bruno Boaro and José C. Garcia. Stage: Rojas Theater.
