ACT Hub / Chaika Theatre | Review by Grace Cassidy
Democracy Hangs in the Balance
9 August 2025
Any student of history knows that the past has a habit of repeating itself. This has never been more evident than in Canberra’s latest staging of Shakesepeare’s iconic Julius Caesar.
This Chaika Theatre production, directed by Caitlin Baker, artfully pulls a 2000-year-old story into the 21st Century. Julius Caesar (Michael Sparks) is transformed into a smarmy politician who dons a modern suit, smiles for the camera and totes a beautiful wife on his arm. He is the very image of a modern party leader. Conspirators skulk around in double-breasted coats, swords are traded for guns and messages that might have been shouted across a battlefield are sent through a crackling speaker, clasped to a soldier’s bullet-proof vest.
The play opens with two young men in hooded jackets skulking across the stage – a runway that cuts through the centre of the room – towards a large banner that hangs from the ceiling. It says, in large letters, ‘ROME FOR CAESAR.’ The boys rush to cover ‘ROME’ with the word ‘CROWN.’ As the audience will come to learn, this is the crux of the play. For the uninitiated, Julius Caesar is not just a story about a historic assassination, featuring that iconic line ‘Et tu Brutus?’ It’s a story about the end of democracy.
Julius Caesar was assassinated in the last days of the Roman Republic, which had stood strong for more than 400 years until one man came along and inserted himself as dictator. The 60 to 70 conspirators who assassinated him did so to try and preserve their democratic processes, but it was that very act that helped shape Rome into the empire it would become.
The choice to set these events in the 21st Century isn’t just compelling, it’s also hugely disconcerting. Caesar presents a threat to democracy that modern audiences may find all too familiar; the plight of Brutus (Lachlan Ruffy) and Cassius (Yanina Clifton) feels like our own. And the fallout of their actions is an ominous warning of how things could unravel in the coming years.
Baker’s Julius Caesar is a masterclass in precise storytelling, delivered with tight pacing and a deluge of ruthless parallels to modern politics. The show is teeming with outstanding performers. Amy Kowalczuk who plays both Portia and Calpurnia, forges two distinct portrayals as the worried wives of both Caesar and Brutus. In a room full of ego-driven characters, Portia and Calpurnia feel grounded and clear-eyed, but ultimately powerless to stop the disaster they would have been sensible enough to avoid. Meanwhile, a chilling performance by Michael Sparks paints a grim picture of a smug, capricious Caesar, and Karen Vickery’s turn as Casca—precise and biting—is disarmingly good.
All this combined with impeccable, moody lighting choices and a constant undercurrent of eerie music, ominous ticking, or the sounds of a storm raging outside, has audiences white knuckling it for the show’s tense 2-hour run. They watch with bated breath as our heroes race to save their crumbling republic, even knowing their efforts will only push them further into the darkness. Caesar’s allies wage war on those that conspired against him, executing a third of the Senate and propelling themselves into power, eventually crowning Caesar’s great nephew the first Emperor of the Roman Empire, which as we all know, lasted a very long time.
Grace Cassidy is a writer and aspiring actress. Over the past two years, she has fallen in love with Canberra’s theatre scene by participating in theatre workshops, acting in local short films and getting involved in the Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Artist programs. Grace is passionate about storytelling and has a soft spot for theatre that explores complex family relationships, ride or die friendships, and themes of hope.
