Caligula
Samuel Beckett Theatre
★★★☆☆
This Ukrainian Caligula, created in wartime by the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre, in Kyiv, and now touring internationally, arrives freighted with urgency. Directed by Ivan Uryvskyi and performed in Ukrainian with English surtitles, this adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1944 play is more compelling as a political statement than as a piece of theatre.
Conceived before Russia’s full-scale invasion, it now resonates as a meditation on tyranny and resistance, on the collapse of reason and the silence that enables power’s cruelties. “We die because we are guilty,” the play’s hero announces. “We are guilty because we are subjects of Caligula.”
Uryvskyi’s staging is visually striking, elegant and austere, its intellectual ambition sharpened by its pressing political subtext. Yet Caligula is constrained by Camus’s script, an allegory that is both impressive and lifeless. His writing brims with irony, philosophical inquiry and emotional texture, but it lacks dramatic propulsion.
Caligula himself is both madman and child; he literally wishes to capture the moon. When he says, “Tell me, Cherea, why don’t you like me?” he receives a devastating reply: “Because there’s nothing likable about you. Because such feelings can’t be had to order ... I regard you as noxious and cruel ... But I cannot hate you, because I don’t think you are happy.”
READ MORE
There are moments of real lyricism, beautifully handled by the ensemble. “Yes, yes! And that fantastic moment when the sky all flushed with red and gold swings round and shows its other side, spangled with stars ... And the faint smell of smoke and trees and streams that mingles with the rising mist.” The actors deliver these rapturous images with an angry bluntness that keeps them from turning sentimental.
Still, one wonders why Caligula wants the moon so much. The metaphor is a little too clear, so its repetition feels unnecessary. Camus’s strength lies in language, not in theatrical instinct; for all his eloquent insight, he never quite knew how to write for the stage.
Petro Bogomazov’s set is a tall bronze cupboard with multiple compartments that open to reveal the actors: Vitalii Azhnov’s haunted Caligula, Oleksandr Rudynskyi’s weary Cherea and Tetiana Mikhina’s tender Caesonia, with Ludmila Smorodina, Akmal Huriezov and Renat Settarov completing the ensemble.
The structure, geometric and cell-like, lends the production a sense of claustrophobia. The staging, though meticulously composed, is highly stylised and curiously static. Figures are framed in light like statues, their speech punctuated by a sinister echoing note.
Bogomazov’s harsh white overhead lighting and Tetiana Ovsiichuk’s drab, militaristic costumes in greys and earth tones suggest a timeless dictatorship but also monotony.
At the curtain call, the cast appear holding the Ukrainian flag, and the audience rise in ovation. The woman beside me weeps. I am moved by the moment, by what the performance signifies, even if the play itself leaves me untouched.
Runs at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, until Saturday, October 11th
