Jump thou the shark

Let's start by admitting my bias: I really don't like American Repertory Theatre. They're too clever by half--I don't know if it's arrogance induced by the Harvard affiliation, or what, but they do seem peculiarly convinced that their directors are much, much brighter than those punters Chekhov, Racine, Euripides, and especially Shakespeare. I didn't find it particularly edifying in 2007's "Britannicus" to have Nero wailing on an electric guitar while Rome burned. And their modern productions can be downright careless. In their 2006 stage adaptation of "Wings of Desire," the angels discuss at some length their inability to experience sensual joys--no sex, please, we're immortal, but also no coffee, no cigarettes, etc.. And then at the end, when Stalker Angel decides to become human to pursue the trapeze artist he's obsessed with, he disrobes, and the actor has a tattoo. Which the makeup artists never bothered to cover up. So, heaven apparently has tattoo parlors, but no coffee shops or convenience stores. Damn weird zoning regulations they must have up there, but maybe Cambridge residents are used to that kind of thing.

So my expectations of "Julius Caesar" were pretty low, even if I was going on the ides of March, for a little extra frisson. And it might have been the magic of the ides, because for the first hour or so (it's a three-hour-10-minute production; if you arrive early, fight the urge to have a coffee in the lobby) I was grooving with it. I'm a big fan of high-quality, mixed-genre television serials like "Six Feet Under," "The Riches," "The Sopranos," "Dexter," "Battlestar Galactica," "Lost," "Oz," and the like, and for a while there, it felt as though the director was taking a cue from these sorts of shows, with their intense, more-than-naturalistic psychologism, moody music and saturated colors, dark humor, conflicting moral structures, sudden shocking violence, casual drug and alcohol use, upshoots of magical realism, and the constant running themes of how the politics of domestic and public life intertwine.

I liked the hipster-60s costumes and sets, and I liked Portia getting high with the beatnick soothsayer. (Both Portia and Calpurnia were played by the astonishing Sara Kathryn Bakker, who acted the entire rest of the cast into the ground.) I liked the brilliant set--the Loeb stage is a small thrust, and to get a theater-in-the-round feel, they covered the back walls with mirror images of the seats, so it all looked like a half-empty ampitheater. Clevah! I couldn't quite contain my giggles at Caesar's "Star Trek"-era intercom with which he communicated with a servant after Calpurnia begs him not to attend the Senate due to bad omens. ("What say the augurers?" "Klingon ships uncloaking, sir!") And I wasn't a big fan of the tendency of actors to face away from or parallel to each other during many scenes--with the exception of Bakker, none of the actors seemed particularly connected anyway, and such cold blocking didn't help. And it made a complete hash of the decision to make Brutus's servant boy, Lucius, deaf. How could he read lips if no one ever looked at him? Perhaps because, as some reviews have suggested, the entire play was supposed to take place in the imaginings of this disabled boy. Like the final episode of "St. Elsewhere."

Whatever. Somewhere around the 90-minute mark, the shark was decisively jumped. I can't exactly pin down the moment, but it might have been any of these:

* An Oldsmobile is lowered halfway onto the stage, headlights first, and dangles there. It replaces the giant bird wing that, at least, seemed vaguely Romanish and omenish.

* Mark Antony puts on a fleece cap with little horns during the final battle scene.

* The final battle scene is apparently fought with both swords AND machine guns.

* The jazz combo--hey, it's not their fault, musicians are in no position to turn down work and they were good. But do we need a jazz combo in "Julius Caesar?" Do we need Mark Antony lipsynching along with them after the death of Caesar? Does not lipsynching to one's favorite songs lose its potency as a form of emotional release after the age of, say, 15?

* And do we, for the love of all that's holy, need the singer (who looks like the healthy, zaftig woman I pray Amy Winehouse will someday heal into) to sing "Suicide Is Painless"--yep, kids, the theme song from "M*A*S*H"--after the death of Portia?

* Tribonius, in the battle scene, delivers all his lines running around in a circle at top speed with his arms out at a 45-degree angle like a kid playing "airplane."

* This last may be related to the fact that during the second act, Lucius is dressed in what is apparently a homemade "Superman" t-shirt and a glittery cape.

* The show ends with a sort of disco line-dance to "The Party's Over."

For all this, you know, I can't bring myself to say it was a bad play. Somehow the concepts of "good" and "bad" just don't apply. My friends and I left in gales of laughter, agreed that it was about the most messed-up thing we'd ever seen, and went to Border Cafe for big margaritas. It's sort of like the way, in your family or social circle, there are people you actually like and trust in an unself-conscious way. And then there are the people whom you know are bat-style crazy, who can't be trusted with dollar or a secret, whose politics and religion and fashion sense defy any rational analysis, but you always get a kick out of seeing them anyway, just to watch how the weird wind is blowing on that particular day, and get on the phone afterwards to the real friends to tell them what crazy Aunt Betty said this time.

Shakespeare deserves better than to be crazy Aunt Betty, but he's never going to get it at A.R.T., and I figure the cynical, loving, moneygrubbing genius can, in whatever disco-dancing afterlife he's in, live with that.