Usually, when directors crank Shakespeare through the time machine, they're intent on pushing some sort of contemporary-resonance agenda. That doesn't seem to be the case with French director Arthur Nauzyciel's mostly riveting Camelot-era rendition of Julius Caesar, being presented at A.R.T. Or if it is, any such subtext seems to have been overwritten by intervening imperatives.

Judging from the palimpsest of program notes, Nauzyciel may have started out in the "history repeats itself" vein but ended up declaring that "The production isn't set in the '60s -- I believe that all theatre takes place here and now." As a result, his interest in the era is apparently limited to the surface aesth[...]