[2]: 119–120  The original company included such actors as Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ruth Ford, Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, John Hoysradt, Whitford Kane, Norman Lloyd, Vincent Price, Erskine Sanford, Stefan Schnabel and Hiram Sherman.

At the end of October, press agent Henry Senber oversaw a ceremony unveiling the new electric sign identifying the theatre as the Mercury.

Arthur Anderson, who played the role of young Lucius, found himself bored and lonely in his third-floor dressing room at the National Theatre.

"Orson, sitting before his makeup table in his green military greatcoat, looked up in consternation as one of the country's leading drama critics burst into the dressing room and started to tell us such things about the production as we had not hoped to hear even in our most megalomaniacal dreams," Houseman recalled.

In his New York Post review, Brown called Caesar "by all odds the most exciting, the most imaginative, the most topical, the most awesome and the most absorbing of the season's new productions.

[1]: 316  In the New York Herald Tribune, critic Richard Watts called it "a production so exciting and imaginative, so completely fascinating in all its phases, there is nothing to do but let ourselves go and applaud it unreservedly.

For the editing, direction, lighting, presentation scheme of Julius Caesar, which made the Mercury's bare-stage, modern-dress production of that classic one of the most exciting dramatic events of our time.

[18]In financial straits from the outset, the Mercury briefly considered exploiting the sensational success of Caesar by continuing a straight run of the play and setting aside its repertory mission.

Producer Alex Yokel offered a $5,000 advance and 50 percent of the profits, and Welles and Houseman began casting the road company.

[1]: 337  Tom Powers, a leading actor with the Theatre Guild[1]: 337  and a principal in the original production of Strange Interlude,[19] led the company as Brutus.

Also in the cast were Lawrence Fletcher (Caesar), Vincent Donehue (Cinna the Poet), Herbert Ranson[1]: 337  (Cassius, later played by Morgan Farley), Edmond O'Brien (Marc Antony), Edgar Barrier (Casca), Helen Craig (Calpurnia), Muriel Brassler (Portia)[20] and a supporting ensemble of 60.

"These financial set-backs, whose implications would eventually catch up with them in ways that could scarcely have been predicted, did nothing to daunt their high spirits," wrote biographer Simon Callow.

[22]: 358 Brutus received particular praise: "Tom Powers has been vouchsafed the opportunity to reveal, as never before, his innate soundness of spirit," wrote Florence Fisher Parry in The Pittsburgh Press.

[34] Cinna the Poet (1959), a painting by Jacob Landau created 20 years after the pivotal scene in Caesar was performed, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

[35]: 49 [36] Richard Linklater's 2008 film Me and Orson Welles is a romantic comedy set during the days before the opening of Caesar at the Mercury Theatre.

Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible."