How important is it to see Caesar die? To bear witness as Rome’s senators stab him down, with Brutus delivering the final blow.

I’d argue it’s essential. It is the moment when the high-flying rhetoric of regime change meets reality, when ambition turns bloody. It can be a scene of ritualistic power as well as cold savagery.

But when you’ve chosen to costume your characters in elegantly tailored white suits, you are faced with a terrible conundrum: the laundry bill.

Brigid Zwengeni, Septimus Caton, Peter Carroll and cast in Julius Caesar. Photo © Brett Boardman

Directed by Peter Evans, this production drops the curtain just as the assassination begins, sending the audience to the interval and bringing them back for Caesar’s final gasp. When we return the senators are thoroughly bloodied (having changed costume during the break), but the pivotal moment itself – the serial knifing of a leader – has been denied us, its ritualistic shock veiled.

One can only hope the savings on trips to the dry cleaner was worth it. For me, it’s the only real misstep in an otherwise inventive, thoughtful staging that moves briskly, takes risks and resists the temptation to hammer home clanking parallels with the present day.

Mark Leonard Winter goes way out on a limb with his Mark Antony – and it pays off. His hungover lackey in a tracksuit morphs into a wild-eyed yet calculating manipulator of Rome’s mercurial mob. His fury – amplified by a handheld microphone, which at one point he thrusts into Caesar’s wounds as if to catch the sound of their “poor dumb mouths” – is brazen and incandescent. His “Cry havoc!” arrives as a blood-curdling shriek. The parchment of Caesar’s will becomes a magician’s prop in his hands.

Brigid Zengeni’s Brutus is, by contrast, measured and cool-headed, reminding us what a fine speaker of Shakespearean prose she is. Leon Ford’s Cassius is a sharp operator; Peter Carroll is dryly funny as an ancient, piercingly observant Casca. Striding in from the auditorium, Jules Billington lands the Soothsayer’s “Ides of March” warning with authority.

Caesar (Septimus Caton), true to form, blithely waves her away. Caton plays the near-tyrant as a pompous self-aggrandiser, all too ready to mistake weasel words and flattery for truth.

Bell Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Photo © Brett Boardman

Evans has also designed the set, and it works well: tall, red oxide-toned walls loom like blood-soaked banners. After the interval, the stage fills with the movable paraphernalia of a modern military encampment, conjuring a convincing sense of wartime chaos.

Projected subtitles tell us when and where we are (handy) but occasionally they also tell us what’s about to happen. “THE DEATH OF BRUTUS” can only be a spoiler for the uninitiated, and the moment itself never quite reaches tragic altitude when it arrives.

This production is not as adventurous – or as effective – as the dark, stylised Julius Caesar Evans directed for Bell Shakespeare in 2011, which threw Cassius’s duplicity and Brutus’s tragedy into sharper relief. But it sounds the play’s ethical quandary clearly enough, and leaves us with a bracing reminder: when regime change is achieved with bloodied hands, it is wise to have a plan for what comes next.

Bell Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar plays at the Sydney Opera House until 5 April.