All live theater is risky business, but outdoor theater must be the riskiest. The threat of bad weather adds an extra element of possible disaster. But the portents, for a change, were good for Caesar on Friday night: The evening was balmy and calm.

The action on stage was anything but calm, however, as the ancient Roman intrigue unfolded with violent fury.

Shakespeare's great political tragedy Julius Caesar opened this year's Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival on Friday to a just less than full house.

The evening offered commanding performances, supernatural omens, eerie sound effects, skilled debates, conspiracies, political eloquence, mob violence, battles and death. What more could an action-movie-loving public want?

The production is a fine one, with powerful acting, superb sets and imaginative costumes....  Directed by Drama Desk Award winner Russell Treyz, who is back for his fourth season with the festival, this production of Julius Caesar is extremely accessible. Treyz combines some smaller characters to pare down the production a bit, and some of his combinations are wonderfully witty.

From the very beginning the audience is drawn into the action on the stage. To great cries of ''Hail Caesar'' from actors stationed throughout the crowd, Kermit Brown as Caesar is carried through the amphitheater, borne to the stage upon a golden bier.

Brown is effectively noble as the Roman ruler at the height of his career and ego. Even though he is on stage for only a brief portion of the play, his presence inhabits the rest of the production.

The most powerful and multi-faceted performances came from Paul Bernardo as Brutus, Richard Width as Marc Antony and Quinton Cockrell as Cassius.

The assassination scene is wonderfully tense, with the conspirators dressed in white senatorial togas, their glittering knives peeking out from under the soft folds. The assassination itself is bloody and powerful, particularly the aftermath, when the conspirators dip their hands in Caesar's blood to show the howling mobs.

Bernardo is most powerful in the speeches in which he tries to justify the murder of Caesar. Width gives a moving interpretation of Caesar's eulogy, taking Antony from hushed weeping to howling exhortation of the mobs for revenge. Cockrell's Cassius is superb throughout, showing an astounding variety of emotions.

Other outstanding performances were given by Suzanne O'Donnell, who is moving as Portia, Brutus' wife, and Tom Paitson Kelly, who delivers a deliciously gossipy, sneering Casca.... The stage, superbly set by Emmy Award winner Bob Phillips, is vibrant in purple and gold, with great scarlet, eagle-capped standards and suggestions of columns lined in gold. The space in the amphitheater is used well, with levels and stairways filling the stage.