Review: Dead Caeser

Dead Caeser by Chris Taylor
Sydney Theatre Company
Thursday 5 July 2007

As published in today's The Daily Telegraph

Dead Caesar is a comedy revue where writer Chris Taylor of ABC TV’s The Chaser has turned Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar on its head.

In the spirit of Taylor’s television work, everyone is a target as he hurls his humour at political figures, celebrities and the theatre world.

Dead Caesar was originally commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf2Loud program, in which creative teams are given just two weeks, no set and a limited budget to come up with a show.

This creates some pretty edgy and risky theatre that pushes the skills of emerging actors, writers and directors. In Dead Caesar, seven actors come together in the kitsch style of a toga party, creating a play within a play within a play that goes through the events leading up to the assassination of Julius Caesar.

With Andrew Hansen, another Chaser comedian, on the piano, they have created a show that is at times painfully funny, pushing the boundaries of political correctness to the very limit. It wouldn’t be a Chaser show if it didn’t.

Using the comic devices of all good comedy revues, it sets up scenarios so absurd and outrageous that at times you can't believe it. They have littered their production with song and dance, sketch pieces and pop culture references to create a show that is like Monty Python meets Fawlty Towers.

Dead Caesar, however, has lost a lot of the spontaneity that it initially had when first produced earlier this year. The process and pressure of mounting a show within such a limited time frame gave the performance an energy that has been hard to re-capture.

Much of the hilarity is still there, but reproducing it with little further development has meant that the performances can no longer rely on the adrenalin and spontaneity that fueled its previous incarnation. Added to this is a set design that now dwarfs the performers and gets in the way of the action.

Still, overall the performances are very strong, particularly that of Toby Moore as Caesar. When the cast sing, however, the production falls down a bit. But Taylor's humour is biting and the show has some one-liners that will floor you.

Image credit: Heidrun Lohr