Arthur Anderson and Orson Welles in the 1937 production of Caesar.
The New York Public Theater production of Julius Caesar with a President Donald Trump lookalike in the lead role has prompted two major corporate sponsors to pull their support.
Noting the violent assassination scene, Delta Air Lines terminated its four-year-old sponsorship of Public Theater, while Bank of America, an 11-year backer, withdrew its sponsorship of the controversial play, but not of the nonprofit theater company. (It is worth noting Delta backed Public Theater when their 2012 production of Julius Caesar featured a Barack Obama-inspired lead.)
The current Central Park production and resulting controversy prompted Esquire, Vox, Slate and many other news outlets to recall Orson Welles’ production with the Mercury Theatre. His then innovative modern-dress version drew inspiration from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
The Atlantic cited an 80-year old review in The Nation that described Welles’s Caesar as “the most vivid production of Shakespeare seen in New York in this generation.”
The New York Journal opined at the time, “It would have been a fascinating experiment even if it had failed. That it succeeds so admirably is enough to blow the hinges off the dictionary.”
Welles’ Caesar, the freshman stage production of the Mercury Theatre, opened on Nov. 11, 1937.
Welles starred as Brutus. Other cast members included Joseph Holland , George Coulouris, Joseph Cotten and Norman Lloyd,
The production inspired the Robert Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles and Richard Linklater’s 2008 film of the same name starring Zac Efron and Christian McKay.
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