Tunesday : Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

(Orzabal, R/ Hughes, C/ Stanley, I) Performed by Tears For Fears

Welcome to your life
There's no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you

Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

It's my own design
It's my own remorse
Help me to decide
Help me make the most

Of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do I'll be right behind you

So glad we've almost made it
So sad they had to fade it
Everybody wants to rule the world

I can't stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision
Everybody wants to rule the world
Say that you'll never never never never need it
One headline why believe it ?
Everybody wants to rule the world

All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world

We saw Seana McKenna in Lear as a family back in January (the remarkable McKenna played the role as a woman; a queen; and she was leagues ahead of the last male we saw in the role) so when we realised that she would be playing the lead in Julius Caesar at Stratford this summer (this time, simply acting as a woman in a male role), we knew we'd want to see it, too. We attended the play this past weekend, and we weren't disappointed.

I understand the pressure that the Stratford Festival must be under to keep themselves relevant for new generations of theatre goers, but I haven't been thrilled about many of the productions over the past few years; bending genders and sexual orientations to serve diversity over story, and the story always seems to suffer for these choices. And yet, since all of the female parts in Shakespeare's days were played by male actors, there's actually something very organic about women playing in the male roles; playing them as men. Not only was Seana McKenna herself a totally believable and imperious Caesar, but the knockout performance was Irene Poole as Cassius: none of us could take our eyes off of her, and Kennedy reckoned it was probably due to the years Poole must have spent "knocking her head against the solid ceiling of shallow Shakespeare female roles"; as Cassius, Poole was compelling and believable and totally in control of the stage (making even the male actor playing Brutus pale in comparison).

This was directed by Scott Wentworth - an artist we're more familiar with as an actor than as a director - and maybe that's why the production felt so pared down (there was very minimal set and props and effects) and maybe that's also why this felt like an "actor's play": the writing and its delivery was the central offering, and especially in comparison to the strange choices we've seen in other plays over the past few years, and especially as the acting by the women in the production was so outstanding (I particularly liked that the frenzied mob that beats a bystander to death in the wake of Caesar's assassination was wholly comprised of women with clubs), we were all delighted by the effect. I hope to see more productions like this; after all, everybody wants to rule the world.