Bell Shakespeare Company under director James Evans has produced a Julius Caesar for the modern age, played out on designer Anna Tregloan’s revolving billboard scaffolding and in casual modern dress. A multicultural cast is further evidence of Evans’s contemporary directorial approach.

His vision endows the play not with postured hyperbole, but with the absolute credibility of mere mortals, struggling with real issues of enormous portent.

Devoid of togas or breastplates and featuring female actors as Mark Antony (Sara Zwangobani) and Octavius (Emily Havea), the production forsakes historical authenticity to expose the complex universality of human nature. Such an interpretation risks diminishing the stature of Shakespeare’s ascribed tragedy.

Kenneth Ransom’s Caesar, though lofty in his haughty vanity, lacks a stately solemnity in the role. The envious conspirator Cassius played with determined intensity by Nick Simpson-Deeks, the noble Brutus (James Evans), the confident Octavius and the crowd-stirring Antony appear more like ordinary men and women confronting the challenge of extraordinary circumstance.

The production is not without emotional impact. Zwangobani’s outpouring of grief over Caesar’s corpse is a powerfully emotive moment. Portia (Maryanne Fonceca) strikes a familiar chord with her wifely plea for inclusion in Brutus’s cares. The fate of Cinna the Poet (Jemwel Danao) cameos the horror of mob violence and Ghenoa Gela’s Casca relishes the comical irony in Shakespeare’s text.

In the absence of crowds in the Forum or legions upon the battlefield of Philippi, Evans judiciously edits text, doubles up roles and stylises action sequences. Nate Edmondson’s composition and sound design represent the crowd’s responses. Masks differentiate conspirators and citizens.

This Julius Caesar does not reach the tragic heights of King Lear or Hamlet. It does, however, simply and articulately, reveal the universal truths of political and personal ambition. It is a lesson in the consequence of action and motive, told truthfully and plainly to the ears of a modern audience.

Entirely free from affectation, the production may appear pared back and visually artless. This Brechtian aspect in no way diminishes the actors’ performances.

Only Evans, who has admirably and notably stepped into the part of Brutus, truly assumes the dignity and nobility of the fatally flawed tragic hero, tormented by conflicting allegiances to Caesar and Rome.

As Antony, Zwangobani’s oratorical swaying of the crowd is compelling. Simpson-Deeks’s conniving Cassius wields argument with devastating effect.

Shakespeare’s political thriller is less thrilling than illuminating. Evans’s interpretation opts rather for a clear-minded psychological investigation of human behaviour. Empathy is aptly rendered unto Brutus alone, while one is reminded that though the times may change, human nature remains essentially the same.

The tragedy is not what happened on the steps of the Capitol more than two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome, but that society remains manacled by the ironic ambiguity of human nature.

This Julius Caesar is a drama newly minted to reveal history’s prophesy to our own time.