Bridge Theatre | Julius Caesar programme

J U L I U S C A E S A R William Shakespeare

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PETERSEN

SHOWING SOON AT THE BRIDGE THEATRE

BY BARNEY NORRIS

FROM 28 APRIL

JIM BROADBENT

A VERY VERY VERY DARK MATTER

A N E W P L AY B Y M A R T I N M C D O N AG H 10 OCTOBER – 29 DECEMBER 2018

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JULIUS CAESAR William Shakespeare JULIUS CAESAR

David Calder

CALPURNIA, HIS WIFE

Wendy Kweh

MARCUS BRUTUS

Ben Whishaw

PORTIA, HIS WIFE

Leaphia Darko

LUCIUS, HIS AIDE

Fred Fergus

CAIUS CASSIUS

Michelle Fairley

MARK ANTONY

David Morrissey

OCTAVIUS, CAESAR’S HEIR

Kit Young

LEPIDUS, TRIUMVIR WITH ANTONY AND OCTAVIUS

Mark Penfold

CASCA, CONSPIRATOR

Adjoa Andoh

CINNA, CONSPIRATOR

Nick Sampson

DECIUS BRUTUS, CONSPIRATOR

Leila Farzad

CAIUS LIGARIUS, CONSPIRATOR

Mark Penfold

METELLUS CIMBER, CONSPIRATOR

Hannah Stokely

TREBONIUS, CONSPIRATOR

Abraham Popoola

FLAVIUS, TRIBUNE

Sid Sagar

MARULLUS, TRIBUNE

Rosie Ede

POPILIUS LENA, SENATOR

Sid Sagar

STREET BAND

Fred Fergus

Zachary Hart

Abraham Popoola

Kit Young (COBBLER)

SOOTHSAYER

Mark Penfold

ARTEMIDORIUS, CITIZEN

Rosie Ede

CINNA, A POET

Fred Fergus

PHILO, IN OCTAVIUS’ ARMY

Zachary Hart

VARRO, IN BRUTUS’ ARMY

Wendy Kweh

CLAUDIUS, IN BRUTUS’ ARMY

Zachary Hart

OTHER CITIZENS AND PLEBEIANS PLAYED BY MEMBERS OF THE COMPANY

DIRECTOR

Nicholas Hytner

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Bunny Christie

COSTUME DESIGNER

Christina Cunningham

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Bruno Poet

SOUND DESIGNER

Paul Arditti

MUSIC

Nick Powell

FIGHT DIRECTOR

Kate Waters

CASTING DIRECTOR

Toby Whale

COSTUME SUPERVISOR

Peter Todd

PROPS SUPERVISOR

Lily Mollgaad

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Emily Burns

OPENING

Bridge Theatre, 30 January 2018.

LENGTH

About 2 hours, with no interval. Please see Front of House staff for accurate timings.

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

Julius Caesar will be broadcast to cinemas as part of National Theatre Live on Thursday 22 March 2018.

FOR BRIDGE THEATRE Co-Founder Nicholas Hytner

Co-Founder Nick Starr

Technical Producer Katrina Gilroy

Director of Creative Development David Sabel

General Manager Andrew Leveson

Head of Sales and Audience Insight Pauline Fallowell

Acting Heads of Hospitality Charlie Smith Louis Szecowka

Head of Technical Operations Jonny Pascoe

Deputy Head of Stage Ollie Pickering

Head of Lighting Nicole Smith

Deputy Head of Lighting James Lye

Head of Sound Andrew Josephs

Head of Costume Eleanor Dolan

Stage Number One James Edwards

Technical Swing Bethany Laing

Finance Manager Jenni Farge

Production Assistants Bellaray Bertrand-Webb Millie Brierley Rozzy Knox

Front of House Supervisors Terri Hammond Igor Memić Brett Somerville

Payroll Assistant Leanne Mills

Stage Door Manager Rosie Howell

Literary Consultant Will Mortimer

Programme Editor Lyn Haill

Programme Designer Clare Nicholson, Wheatsheaf Studios

Business Affairs Adviser Neil Adleman

Finance Consultant Lucy Woollatt

Monday Nights Consultant Fran Miller

PR Janine Shalom, Premier 0207 292 8330

Marketing Joe Public

Branding Agency Koto

Website Development Substrakt

Ticketing and Marketing Software Spektrix

Media Agency the7stars

FOR JULIUS CAESAR Production Manager Kate West

Company Stage Manager Hetti Curtis

Deputy Stage Manager Laura Wilson

Assistant Stage Managers David Putman Chloe Turner

Company Voice Work Jeannette Nelson

Lighting Programmer Warren Letton

Lighting Operator Dan Miller

Sound Number One James Melling

Sound Number Two Laura Gingell

Production Sound Engineers Matt Ferrie Ryan Griffin

Sound Crew Tom Bosworth Diego Fernandez Yamina Mezeli Oscar Thompson Will Thompson Sam Walker

Production Electrician Simon Denman-Ellis

Stage Crew Rhys Mills Sam Palmer Fraser Robinson Sam Shuck

Wardrobe Manager Anna Bliss Scully

Dressers Rachel Piper Hannah Rodgers Tara Schucart

Costume Technician Clio Alphas

Costume Production Assistant Sabia Smith

Casting Assistant Anna Cooper

Production Photographer Manuel Harlan

Poster Photographer Chris Mosey

Set constructed and painted by All Scene All Props

Seating stand built by Weld-Fab Stage Engineering Ltd

Additional scenery by RK Resource

Drapes provided by Prompt Side

Drop boxes provided by Electric Foundry

Automation by Absolute Motion Control Ltd

Transport provided by Paul Matthew Transport

Forklift hire Briggs Equipment UK

Stage Rigger Josh Reeves

Rigging provided by Rigging Services

Lighting hire Sparks

Military Adviser Jonathan Shaw

Sound system Autograph Sound Recording

Make-up supplied by

Special thanks to Mary Beard Matthew d’Ancona Peter Holland Cutler and Gross National Theatre Simon Evans and Headlong

Crew provided by Pirate Crew Gallow Glass

Production Carpenters Micky Fernandez Nick Smith

SOUNDING

NAMES

Peter Holland

I

n the summer of 2017 a number of Republicans in the US were incensed to learn that the New York Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar had Caesar made to look somewhat like (orange hair, red tie) – and gesturing even more like – Donald Trump.

Few of those who vociferously complained that the production was recommending assassinating the President had noticed that Shakespeare’s play hardly makes a convincing case that murdering a political leader is good for the state that the conspirators support.

In an even more remarkable demonstration of the pertinence of the play than the title character’s make-up in New York, Shakespeare companies all across the US began to receive hate mail, even though most recipients were not even performing the play. The name Shakespeare was apparently enough to warrant the ill wishes and, though none of the threats of rape and murder turned into violence, the fate of Cinna the poet – of having the right name but being in the wrong place – hovered disconcertingly over the vitriol.

As Orson Welles knew well in his 1937 production for the Mercury Theatre, precise analogies for Shakespeare plays are much less effective than broader ones.

Subtitled ‘Death of a Dictator’, Welles’ Julius Caesar was full of fascist salutes, menacing black-shirted troops and echoes of Nuremberg rallies, but his Caesar was neither

Note: Images have been removed from this digital edition for rights reasons.

Hitler nor Mussolini. Italian fascism and German Nazism were pointed towards, but the argument of the production was not limited to them. Shakespeare’s argument about action in a threatened state speaks generally, not specifically.

In one respect, though, Shakespeare’s Caesar and Donald Trump share a striking trait: the tendency to speak of themselves in the third person so that ‘I’ becomes either ‘he’ or ‘Donald Trump/Caesar’. The technical term for this trope of what the Oxford English Dictionary

Shakespeare’s play hardly makes a convincing case that murdering a political leader is good for the state that the conspirators support calls “excessive use of the pronoun he” is ‘illeism’. The effect is complex. Sometimes it can seem narcissistic, a self-aggrandising definition of the public persona, a branding of the name as a kind of corporate logo with an identity apart from the individual: Trumpism as well as Trump, Caesarism as well as Caesar. But the separation of the self that is speaking from the self who

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acts can also be disconcerting, a sign of an anxiety about the kind of connection with – even a preference for a disconnection from – the speaker. Is the Caesar that Caesar speaks about the same Caesar as Caesar thinks of himself as being? There is, too, something performative in the language, a separation of actor from character, an indication of a theatricality and of a metatheatricality too, an awareness of being not oneself but a character – hence the use of illeism as a rehearsal technique for actors, a way of the actor presenting the character being played rather than representing it.

Caesar refers to himself as Caesar 19 times in the play, a remarkable frequency given that he is killed by the midpoint. By comparison, Hamlet speaks his own name 11 times in a much longer play and an enormous role – and seven of those are in a single speech, his apology

to Laertes just before the duel: “Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes?

Never Hamlet”. Again and again Caesar says ‘Caesar’ as a sign of his authority and power. In itself this self-referencing seems an indicator of the would-be dictator that the conspirators fear to be imminent. Just before the conspirators begin their action, Caesar asks, “What is now amiss / That Caesar and his Senate must redress?”, not only speaking of himself but suggesting, with a quasi-royal arrogance, that the Senate belongs to him, “his Senate”, just as he responds to Artemidorus’ attempt to warn him with, “What touches us ourself shall be last served”, using the first-person plural of the monarch. Caesar is a word that means much more than a name. In itself it had, by the time Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, come to mean an absolute monarch, a dictator,

something Shakespeare had had Richard III mean when, offering to marry Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, he tells her she “shall be sole victoress, Caesar’s Caesar”. Quite probably pronounced then with a hard ‘C’, Caesar would have sounded closer to the German Kaiser than we now hear in the word. The Roman emperors who would go on to rule, starting with the play’s Octavius, would all be Caesars, a title, not a family name or Roman cognomen. The name points in Julius Caesar to its future meanings after the fall of the Republic, as if it already carries its status in later history, in a play strongly aware that it is itself a performance of an event, not simply the event itself: as Cassius puts it after the murder, “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, / In states unborn, and accents yet unknown?”, speaking English, not Latin, in a performance in a theatre in England, in a play that was by no means the first to deal with Caesar’s death.

The first actor to play Cassius – like everyone who has played the role since – is describing his own performance in speaking the lines.

How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, / In states unborn, and accents yet unknown?

But Caesar is not the only illeist (yes, that is the correct word for one given to illeism) in the play. Brutus says ‘Brutus’ 10 times, the last being his announcement at the final battle that “Brutus’ tongue / Hath almost ended his life’s history” – that use of ‘history’ to mean something close to ‘biography’ that is Shakespeare’s usual

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narcissistic, self-centred, is the same necessarily true of Brutus’?

If Brutus is the paradigmatic portrait of the ineffectual liberal, confused in his reasoning, mired in impossible moral dilemmas over action and inaction, he also attempts to view himself, trying to stand outside his identity and looking at it. Illeism is, then, part of his analysis of that self he has that is trying to engage with and evaluate a commitment to political action.

Cassius, trying to persuade Brutus to join the conspiracy, weighs the two names against each other: “Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’? / Why should that name be sounded more than yours?” The answer to the question may be difficult but Caesar is certainly ‘sounded’ more than Brutus: in all, the word ‘Brutus’ is spoken 137 times in the full text of the play, the word ‘Caesar’ an extraordinary 202. That remarkable frequency is nearly three times the number of occasions ‘Hamlet’ is sounded in Hamlet. In the two

scenes of Caesar’s murder and the funeral oration alone, ‘Caesar’ is spoken 89 times, including the moment when the two names Brutus and Caesar merge, as a member of the crowd listening to Brutus’ speech calls out, “Let him be Caesar”. Antony, in turn, makes Caesar an archetype: “Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?” Caesar is a Caesar, not the Caesar, and another plebeian makes Caesar in death the king he was not in life: “O royal Caesar!”

But, beyond such names, Shakespeare fills his play with the names of others, many repeated far more often than is his practice elsewhere.

The Senate is full of named people, far more of them than Shakespeare’s company could cast without doubling; modern productions, too, have to double but also often connect together different senators into one. When Publius (in

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this production Cicero), one of the senators outside the circle of the conspirators, stands shocked and silent after the murder of Caesar (as Cassius describes him, “quite confounded with this mutiny”), Brutus and Cassius address him by name not once but three times in four lines: “Cicero, good cheer”, “So tell them, Cicero”, “And leave us, Cicero”. When Brutus asks Volumnius (in this production Popilius), in the debacle of the battle, to help him die, he calls him over by name and then addresses him by it four times over, insisting that we hear and grasp this minor figure’s name. In Macbeth there are in the cast list thanes called Angus, Menteith and Caithness but their names are never spoken, simply used for stage directions and speech prefixes; for theatre audiences they are, in effect, nameless. But in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare is determined to have names heard and reiterated.

Except, of course, for one major group of characters. Not one member of the crowd, the mob, the plebeians, the workers, the commoners, the citizens or whatever else we or the play might call them, who fill the stage over and over again in the play – and who will also be the soldiers who died in their thousands at the battle of Philippi – has a name. Of the two groups who make up SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, the government of the Ancient Roman Republic), the senators of Rome have names but not the people of Rome. Some, perhaps all, have trades, like the cobbler in the opening scene. Malleable, fickle and self-serving they may be, easily swayed by oratory and demagoguery, dangerous in the extreme, a many-headed monster. But they are also nameless, strikingly anonymous in a play so overstuffed with names.

PETER HOLLAND, JANUARY 2018 Peter Holland is McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

THE

ASSASSINATION

THAT

SET

THE TEMPLATE Mary Beard

T

he murder of Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BCE – the ‘Ides of March’ in the Roman calendar – is the world’s most famous assassination. It set the pattern for the future. For many of the Roman emperors who followed Caesar likewise came to violent ends (it was a rarity for the rulers of the Roman world to die in their beds). And it has set the template for political killing ever since. It was no accident that in 1865 the assassins of Abraham Lincoln chose ‘Ides’ as their secret code word.

But, famous as it was, this defining moment of political violence was in many ways a botched job. The assassins – a motley group of high-minded libertarians who objected on principle to Caesar’s ‘dictatorship’, and political chancers who were out for their own ends – were singularly inefficient. They killed the intended target, but in the process wounded many of their own allies in what we would call ‘friendly fire’. Despite some of their over-confident claims, they did not have widespread backing from the population at large.

Many ordinary Romans were devastated by the death of the man they saw as their hero; and the story goes that one particular group of plebs was confused, upset and very angry when they streamed out of a gladiatorial show very soon after the murder, only to bump into Caesar’s corpse being hurried away by a few loyal followers, the dead man’s arms awkwardly hanging down from the litter on which he was carried. More important, the whole murderous moment was too little too late. The assassins may have imagined they were saving Rome from one-man rule. In fact, their deed led directly to a series of civil wars that brought about exactly that: one-man-rule for the rest of Roman time. As often in human history, it was easy enough to get rid of an autocrat, harder to get rid of autocracy itself.

Julius Caesar is the best-known name in Roman history. He has given us some of the common catch phrases of political life (‘crossing the Rubicon’) and some still familiar Latin slogans (‘Veni. Vidi. Vici’, but not ‘Et tu Brute?’ – that was Shakespeare’s invention). And some of the major events of his career even now stand out in the history of the West: the brutally successful conquest of Gaul, which was deemed mass genocide even by some Romans; the civil war that he waged on his political enemies in the city (effectively declared when he marched, with his army, across that famous river Rubicon, which marked the boundary between the province of Gaul and Italy, and onto the city of Rome itself); and, after his victory in that war, the gradual subversion of the traditional democratic structures of Rome, eventually, in the last months of his life, being made ‘Dictator for Life’, the precursor to the long line of emperors who were to follow him. Much less clear (even though – or perhaps because – his own accounts of some of these events survive) are Caesar’s aims, motivations and precise political ambitions.

One view has always been that Caesar was out for nothing more than personal power for its own sake, and the protection of his own status and position. In pursuit of that aim, and to get his own way, he was prepared to invade his country, rather than be humiliatingly recalled from Gaul by his political rivals. He was also prepared to exploit the backing of the people at large out of nothing more than self-interest – and for that reason also to undermine the fragile democracy that

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was then Rome’s system of government. Some modern and ancient writers have even claimed that he was determined to make himself a living god on earth. Others have seen a much more high-minded ideological programme behind Caesar. According to this view, although born an aristocrat (into what was then a rather faded family), he was a major participant in the loaded political debates of the first century BC – between on the one hand an arrogant and exploitative (albeit in some form democratic) Êlite and on the other those who

backed the interests of the disadvantaged, the excluded and the ‘left behind’. To follow this line, Caesar’s invasion of Rome and his violent confrontation with the Roman governing class was, at least in part, in the interests of the people. If democracy was overridden, it was a version of democracy that was little more than a corrupt form of élite power-sharing. Caesar may have fixed the elections to political office, but it was in the interests of bringing benefits to the poor, of clearing slums, of creating new towns, and sharing the profits of Rome’s vast, and still growing, empire more widely.

There have always been different ‘judgements’ on Caesar’s career: was he the self-interested autocrat or the brave reformer prepared to take on the privilege of the old élite? Equally disputed are the motives of the assassins. Most of them were personal friends, even if long-term political rivals, of Caesar and their official slogan was ‘liberty’, proclaiming the freedom supposedly enshrined in the traditional structures of government against the domination of an autocrat. This was summed up on the coin issued by Brutus

shortly after the assassination [above], which proclaimed the date of the murder (‘Ides of March’) and depicted a pair of daggers flanking a small round hat. The hat (the ‘cap of liberty’) was a well-known Roman symbol, given to slaves if and when they were granted their freedom. The message here was obvious: Rome had been liberated by the murder of Caesar (hence the daggers), winning its freedom as if it had been enslaved. But some of the conspirators at least, were members of a conservative clique, driven by the desire to protect their own sectional interests. It was not popular freedom they were upholding, it was their own freedom (or licence) to continue to enjoy, and profit from, their privileged position at the top of the Roman social and political hierarchy.

The figure of Brutus sums up this ambivalence. Shakespeare has bequeathed to us an image of this assassin as a man of high moral standards, the noblest of killers. That was certainly one side of his

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Roman image too. But sharply conflicting stories circulated about him. One of the most notorious aspects of Brutus’ earlier career in Roman accounts was his exploitation of the provincial population of Cyprus, lending out money at 48 per cent interest (extortionate even by Roman standards, and arguably illegal). And as if to parade the ambivalence of his motives in getting rid of Caesar, the very same coin that displayed on one side the daggers and cap of liberty, on the other displayed the head of Brutus himself. We now take for granted the presence of rulers on coinage: it is a feature of monarchy that the head of the monarch will lodge in our pockets and purses. But Julius Caesar was the first living person in the West systematically to have his head cast into the currency, and that was taken as a clear symbol of autocracy. The coinage issued by Brutus sent irreconcilably incompatible signals: decorated on one side with the symbols of liberty, on the other with those of autocracy.

The assassins may have imagined they were saving Rome from one-man rule. In fact, their deed led directly to a series of civil wars that brought about exactly that: one-manrule for the rest of Roman time These conflicting views may help to explain the fact that Caesar’s assassins had no forward plan after the killing itself. For a few weeks, both sides – Caesar’s supporters and his murderers alike – tried to pretend that it was pretty much business as usual. Almost as if nothing had happened, Brutus and Cassius took over the governorship of provinces in the East. But inevitably the conflict was soon rekindled

– leading to almost 15 years of renewed civil war. It is one of the most densely complicated and bloody periods of Roman history: first the supporters of Caesar, as we see in Shakespeare’s play, defeated the forces of the assassins. Then Caesar’s supporters turned on each other, in a series of shifting factions, alliances and liaisons – in which first Lepidus was marginalised, then Octavius and Antony (now living with and fighting alongside Cleopatra) challenged each other.

The final conflict came at the naval battle of Actium off what is now the north Greek coast. Clearly losing, Antony and Cleopatra scuttled back to Egypt, leaving Octavius the ruler of the Roman world. It is perhaps the sequel that is the most surprising turn of all. The brutal, ambitious and frankly thuggish heir of Caesar that we see in Shakespeare’s play somehow transformed himself into a safe pair of hands, even a respected elder statesman, changing his name in the process from Octavius to Augustus (an invented name that means something close to ‘Revered One’). And 40 years later, in 14 CE, the longest-reigning Roman emperor ever, having learned well the dangers of autocracy and having established the structures of imperial rule that would last for centuries, he died – peacefully in his bed.

MARY BEARD, JANUARY 2018 Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Newnham College and author of SPQR: A history of Ancient Rome (Profile Books).

C

owards die many times before their deaths: / The valiant never taste of death but once.” On 16 December 1977, the imprisoned Nelson Mandela signed his name beside these lines from Julius Caesar in the hidden copy of Shakespeare’s works that was known as the ‘Robben Island Bible’.

That the play spoke to the Elizabethan audience of 1599 – animated by rebellion, political turbulence and the question of royal succession – is no surprise. More striking is its endurance as a text for subsequent ages, and a guidebook to power and its exercise in our own times.

To an almost uncanny extent, the great rhetorical argument over Caesar’s corpse between Brutus and Antony mirrors the fundamental divisions revealed by the extraordinary upheavals of the past two years and, more specifically, the rise of ‘post-truth’, online populism and fake news.

As one of the Senators observes, “it is a strange-disposed time: / But men may construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purposes of the things.” In other words, reality has become

fungible, an option capriciously chosen from a buffet according to taste. Rome, like Donald Trump’s America, has succumbed to the allure of what the presidential aide Kellyanne Conway famously called “alternative facts”.

This is what eludes Brutus. In his Stoic vanity, he is the Roman counterpart of the modern liberal élite at its most insulated. He understands, as the philosopher Allan Bloom puts it in Shakespeare’s Politics (1964), that Caesar is “a man who has built his palace on the ruins of the Republic”, but, in drawing that conclusion, “thinks too well of himself”.

He urges the mob to “censure me in your wisdom” and “be the better judge”, appealing to love of country, “a place in the commonwealth” and hatred of tyranny in the abstract. He instructs them to rise above the worship of kings: “Who is here so base that would be a bondman?”

In his lofty rationalism, there are uncomfortable echoes of the Remain campaign’s bombardment of the 2016 electorate with statistics during the EU referendum, embedded in which was the message that only a fool, an undeveloped citizen, could vote for Brexit.

In his moral certainty – “armed so strong in honesty” as he puts it in his argument with Cassius – Brutus is always quick to dismiss man’s lower instincts and to scorn ‘bondmen’, ‘slaves’ and ‘undeservers’. He would have nodded as Hillary Clinton vilified half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables”.

No less than Brutus, Clinton personified the belief that a republic is best led by those who have proved their civic virtue, boast the strongest credentials, and have clambered the cursus honorum – the ladder of public office. What her Republican opponent grasped was that the rules of the game had changed. In the age of shattered public trust and rhetoric weaponised by social media – “the universal shout,” as the tribune Marullus would have called it – politics could become a branch of showbusiness. Trump, a reality TV star rather than a public servant, treated the US voters as an audience consuming entertainment rather than a civically-engaged electorate – and was duly rewarded.

Antony senses the same potential in the febrile mood of the Roman mob. His oratory is a chilling masterpiece of post-

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truth politics, reflecting a cunning recognition that, in febrile times, emotional resonance matters much more than rational evaluation.

In addition to his ironic destruction of Brutus, he employs narrative rather than logic, blaming each of the conspirators for a specific wound with all the vigour of a story-teller rather than the forensic detachment of a prosecutor (“Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through”). Whether or not these details are correct, they have emotional impact, which is all that Antony seeks. As Trump once said, when asked if it was really true, as he claimed, that the tiles in the nursery at Mar-a-Lago, his West Palm Beach club, were personally made by Walt Disney: “Who cares?”

No less than today’s most ruthless manipulators of social media feeds, secret algorithms and big data, Antony knows exactly what he is doing: “Mischief, thou art afoot, / Take thou what course thou wilt.” As Garry Wills remarks in his study of the play’s rhetoric, he grasps “the difference between leadership that issues orders and leadership that recruits cooperation”.

It is precisely for this reason that Antony brandishes a document that he says is Caesar’s will and buys the support of the crowd with a legacy of “seventy-five drachmas” a head, as well as access to the fallen leader’s walks, orchards and private arbours.

This is populism at its purest, a promised bonanza with which Brutus’s high morality can scarcely compete. The heirs of Antony feel no more compunction promising £350 million a week extra for the NHS or a “big beautiful wall” along the US–Mexico border. What matters to them is not honesty or practicality but the immediate visceral response that their narrative provokes.

In today’s politics, as in Julius Caesar, menace walks hand-in-hand with bogus charm.

Even as he flatters the mob, Antony raises the prospect of “a sudden flood of mutiny”, calling upon the very “stones of Rome” to rise in fury. Laced as his speech is with professions of love and comity, it is a call to civil disobedience – as intellectually dishonest as Trump’s studied evenhandedness between white supremacists and neo-Nazi supremacists after the Charlottesville riots of August last year, or his invocation in his inaugural speech

of “American carnage”. The populists of the 21st century play with the same fire that ignites Shakespeare’s Renaissance Rome.

The failure of Brutus is the failure of so many élites to recognise the power of instinct and impulse, and the need to communicate their values in a way that recognises emotional as well as rational imperatives.

To encounter Julius Caesar afresh in our own time is to recall that moral and political rectitude is not enough. More than ever, truth needs an emotional delivery system that engages with experience, memory and hope. The pendulum will not swing back from the Corbynite and Brexiteer fringes to a comforting metropolitan centre ground.

Yet the play is much more than an indictment of oligarchical presumption. It is about us, as well. The clearest-eyed of the conspirators is Cassius, who sees not only that Brutus is wrong to let Antony live but that the people themselves are wholly complicit in Caesar’s autocracy: “I know he would not be a wolf, / But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.”

Shakespeare’s plebeians are ovine indeed. They fall first for Brutus, yet miss his entire purpose when they cry, “Let him be Caesar” – offering precisely the tyrannical power from which he sought to protect the republic. No less quickly are they swayed by Antony’s charisma to turn on the conspirators.

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Such pliability is easy to disparage as pre-democratic primitivism – until one recalls the faddish speed with which “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” became the chant of last summer, or the spectacle of thousands of ordinary Americans shouting, “Lock her up!” when Trump mentioned Clinton at his rallies.

Our immunity to the contagions of the herd is not as strong as we might suppose, or care to be reminded. If the remarkable events of the past two years have a lesson, it is that modern democracy is not as robust as it once seemed. According to a recent study

by Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, less than one in three American millennials – those born between 1980 and 1997 – believe that it is absolutely “essential” for them “to live in a democracy”.

What matters more than Caesar’s fall is what follows him Only 19 per cent of the same age cohort insist that it would be illegitimate for the military to seize power if the civilian government proved incompetent. As Harvard philosopher Mounk has written: “we must at this point ponder the possibility that the self-correcting mechanisms on which we pin our hopes for the future will turn out to be just as illusory as those that have proved elusive in the past.”

It falls to a lone plebeian to issue one of the core warnings of the play: “I fear there will be a worse come in his place”. What matters more than Caesar’s fall is what follows him. “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!” cries Brutus, as Rome descends into violence and he

grasps the vicious irony that the conspirators, by killing Caesar, have made him a god and ensured the ultimate victory of Caesarism.

The same dilemma is posed by contemporary politics: what happens when the Brexiteers have done their work? Who will succeed Trump?

Such questions nag at the conscience like ragged nails. It is tyranny, not just tyrants, that we must fear. It is our own weakness that allows charismatic leadership to become autocracy. Julius Caesar remains so unsettlingly contemporary because its ultimate challenge is not to those who seek power, but to the rest of us. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

MATTHEW D’ANCONA, JANUARY 2018 Matthew d’Ancona is author of Post Truth: The new war on truth and how to fight back, a columnist for The Guardian and the Evening Standard, and a regular c ontributor to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He is also a former Editor of The Spectator and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1989.

REHE ARSAL PHOTOGR APHS BY MANUEL HARL AN

Ben Whishaw

Michelle Fairley

REHE ARSAL S

Fred Fergus

Wendy Kweh

David Calder

Abraham Popoola

Leaphia Darko

David Morrissey

Adjoa Andoh

Leila Farzad

Rosie Ede

Hannah Stokely

JULIUS CAESAR CAST

Adjoa Andoh CASCA

THEATRE includes, for the Royal Shakespeare Company: Julius Caesar (also West End and New York), The Dispute (also Lyric Hammersmith), Tamburlaine, The Odyssey and Crowned With Fame. For the National Theatre: Or You Could Kiss Me, The Revenger’s Tragedy, His Dark Materials, Stuff Happens and A Streetcar Named Desire (NT Studio). Elsewhere in London: title role in Assata Taught Me at the Gate; Soul at the Hackney Empire (from Royal & Derngate); Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Donmar Warehouse; Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes and Starstruck at the Tricycle; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, In the Red and Brown Water and The Snow Queen at the Young Vic; Purgatorio at the Arcola; Sugar Mummies and Breath/Boom at the Royal Court; Nights at the Circus and Pericles at the Lyric Hammersmith; Blood Wedding at the Almeida; In the Bunker with the Ladies at the Drill Hall; and The Vagina Monologues at the Old Vic. TELEVISION includes Death in Paradise, Acceptable Risk, Liar, Line of Duty, New Tricks, River, Cucumber, Brian Pern: Death of Rock, Broadchurch, Wizards vs Aliens, The Interceptor, Chasing Shadows, Law & Order, Scott and Bailey, Missing, Mrs Inbetweeney, MI-High, Doctor Who (series 3 & 4), The Shadow in the North, Wire in the Blood, Chopra Town, Silent Witness, Casualty, In Search of Myths and Heroes, Macbeth, Jonathan Creek, Close Relations, Peak Practice, Thieftakers, Brass Eye, Twelve Angry Men, EastEnders and One in Four: A Short Film About Melons.

FILM includes Brotherhood, Adulthood, Remainder, Julius Caesar (as Portia), Invictus, A Rather English Marriage, Every Time I Look at You, I Is a Long Memoried Woman and What My Mother Told Me.

David Calder JULIUS CAESAR

THEATRE includes, in London: title role in King Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe (Evening Standard Award nominee for Best Actor); The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures at Hampstead; The Audience, The Nether (Olivier Award nomination), Rock ‘n’ Roll, Heartbreak House and Fiddler on the Roof in the West End; Five Gold Rings and Conversations After a Burial at the Almeida; The Little Foxes at the Donmar Warehouse; The Doctor’s Dilemma, Hamlet, King James Bible, Marat/Sade and The Futurists at the National Theatre; Victor in Arthur Miller’s The Price and Iago in Othello at the Young Vic. For the Royal Shakespeare Company:

The Tempest (as Prospero), Twelfth Night, Moby Dick, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice (as Shylock; Evening Standard Award nomination), The Pretenders, Moscow Gold, H.I.D., The Plain Dealer and The Plantagenets.

In repertory: Accounts at the Traverse Edinburgh; Butley (title role) at the Library, Manchester; City Sugar at York Theatre Royal; Macbeth (title role), The Merchant of Venice (Shylock) and A View from the Bridge at Duke’s Lancaster; and seasons with Prospect, the RSC and Belgrade Coventry.

TELEVISION includes Call the Midwife, Motherland, Inside No.9, The Moonstone, Emerald City, Vera, The Scandalous Lady W, Cuckoo, Casualty, Utopia 82, Houdini, DCI Banks, Father Brown, Trollied, The Wrong Mans, Mr Selfridge, Lewis, Titanic, Edward VIII: The Plot to Topple a King, Trial & Retribution IX, Hitler: The Rise of Evil, The Commander, Anybody’s Nightmare, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, Holding On, Henry IV, Cracker, Bramwell (three series), A Question of Attribution, A Doll’s House, Tumbledown, The Trials of Klaus Barbie, Wynne and Penkovsky (as Greville Wynne) and Widows.

FILM includes The Hatton Garden Job, The Lost City of Z, The Lady in the Van, Queen of the Desert, Rush, United, Red Riding: The Year of our Lord 1980, Mummy 3, Goya’s Ghosts, Perfume, Mr In-Between, The King is Alive (a Dogme film), The World is Not Enough, American Friends, Defence of the Realm and Moonlighting.

CONCERT Socrates’ Antigone with City of London Sinfonia at BBC Proms 2003.

Leaphia Darko PORTIA

TRAINING Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. THEATRE includes Cookies at Theatre Royal Haymarket; Mary Stuart at the Almeida; Julius Caesar at the RSC; Ghost Office for National Youth Theatre; and Saffy for Old Vic New Voices. She also appeared in the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

Rosie Ede

MARULLUS / ARTEMIDORUS TRAINING Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

THEATRE includes Mrs Orwell at the Old Red Lion; 1984 for Headlong; The Bacchae and Blood Wedding for the Royal & Derngate, Northampton; Aladdin at Greenwich; Ladies Unlimited at Battersea Barge; The Crime at Blossoms at Brewhouse, Taunton; and When We Are Married and Side by Side by Sondheim

at Theatre Royal, Bristol.

TELEVISION includes Doc Martin (four series), Call the Midwife, A Gert Lush Christmas, Life in Squares, Toast of London, Casualty, Doctors, Chucklevision, Our Hidden Lives, Blessed, North and South, Grass, Peak Practice, My Family and The Cazalets.

FILM includes Patrick, A Streetcat Named Bob, Blackball, Finding Neverland and The Heart of Me. RADIO includes Talk About the Danube Being Blue and The Ladies’ Paradise.

Michelle Fairley CAIUS CASSIUS

THEATRE includes Road, Neverland, Remembrance Day, Loyal Women and The Weir (also West End and Broadway) at the Royal Court; Splendour, Othello and The Wild Duck at the Donmar Warehouse; Huis Clos and Gates of Gold at Trafalgar Studios; Dancing at Lughnasa at the Old Vic; Scenes from the Big Picture at the National Theatre; Oleanna in the West End; Greta Garbo Came to Donegal, Factory Girls, The Hostage and Pentecost at the Tricycle; Paradise Lost, Women of Troy, Love and Joyriders for Paines Plough/UK tour; Macbeth (as Lady Macbeth) at West Yorkshire Playhouse; The Lady from the Sea at the Citizens, Glasgow; Dr Faustus and Here I Come! at the Tron, Glasgow; Leonce and Lena at the Crucible, Sheffield; and The Doctor of Honour for Cheek by Jowl.

TELEVISION includes The White Princess, Fortitude, Rebellion, The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, Crossing Lines, Resurrection, 24: Live Another Day, Suits, Common, Coming Up: Colour, Game of Thrones, Midsomer Murders, Silent Witness, A Short Stay in Switzerland, Lark Rise to Candleford, Misfits, Taggart, The Street, Trial & Retribution, Bel’s Boy, Strictly Confidential, The Catherine Tate Show, Ahead of the Class, The Golden Hour, Holby City, The Clinic, In Deep, Rebus, McCready and Daughter, Births, Marriages and Deaths, Vicious Circle, The Previous Blood, The Broker’s Man, The History of Tom Jones, Safe and Sound and The Children of the North.

FILM includes Heart of the Sea, Philomena, Montana, Jack and the Cuckoo, Clock Heart, The Invisible Woman, Chatroom, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One, The Duel, The Others, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Hideous Kinky, Hidden Agenda and Hidden City.

Leila Farzad DECIUS BRUTUS

TRAINING Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

THEATRE includes Blue Remembered Hills at Chichester Festival Theatre; and Exile and Miriam Gonzalez Durantez for Coalition at Theatre 503.

TELEVISION includes Innocent, Count Arthur Strong, Cuffs, Man Down, Twenty Twelve, Law & Order and Married Single Other.

Fred Fergus

LUCIUS / CINNA THE POET / STREET BAND TRAINING London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art THEATRE includes Rebel Angel at the Old Operating Theatre Museum; Eden Gate and The Hawke Papers for Produced Moon; and Substance for Sunday’s Child.

FILM Wonder Woman, Lucid and Baar Baar Dekho; and the short films After Butt, Heart’s Ease and Mary Jane.

Zachary Hart

PHILO / CLAUDIUS / STREET BAND TRAINING Recently graduated from Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (nominated for The Spotlight award).

Wendy Kweh CALPURNIA / VARRO

TRAINING Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. THEATRE includes Snow in Midsummer for the RSC; The Trap at the Omnibus; Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie at HighTide; Boy at the Almeida; You For Me For You at the Royal Court; Image of an Unknown Young Woman at the Gate; Chimerica in the West End; Moonwalking in Chinatown at the Soho; The Oresteia at the National Theatre; and Romeo and Juliet for W!ld Rice.

TELEVISION includes Silent Witness, Apocalypse Slough, EastEnders, Holby City, Coronation Street, Casualty, Murder City, The Crooked Man and The Bill.

FILM includes Hot Hot Hot and The Blue Mansion.

JULIUS CAESAR CAST

David Morrissey MARK ANTONY

THEATRE includes Hangmen at the Royal Court; title role in Macbeth at Liverpool Everyman; In a Dark Dark House at the Almeida; Three Days of Rain at the Donmar Warehouse; Much Ado About Nothing in the West End; title role in Peer Gynt at the National Theatre; King John, Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III at the RSC; Ghetto at Riverside Studios; El Cid and Twelfth Night for Cheek by Jowl; Jug at Stratford East; and WC/PC at Liverpool Playhouse.

TELEVISION includes The City & the City, Britannia, The Missing, Extant, The Driver, The 7:39, The Walking Dead, True Love, London’s Burning, Richard II, Field of Blood, South Riding, Scaredycat, Sleepyhead, Murder on the Orient Express, 5 Days, U Be Dead, Doctor Who, Sense and Sensibility, Cape Wrath, Ripley’s Gold (as Ripley), The Deal (as Gordon Brown; Best Actor, RTS Award), State of Play, Out of Control, Clocking Off, Murder, Pure Wickedness, Big Cat, Our Mutual Friend, Holding On, Out of the Blue, The One that Got Away, Available Light, Cause Célèbre and One Summer.

FILM includes The Ones Below, Welcome to the Punch, Earthbound, Blitz, Nowhere Boy, Centurion, Mrs Mandela, Red Riding Trilogy, Is Anybody There?, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Waterhorse, The Reaping, Basic Instinct 2, Addiction, Derailed, Stoned, This Little Life, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Hilary and Jackie, Born Romantic, Card of Death, Fanny and Elvis, The Commissioner, Some Voices, Being Human, Waterland, Robin Hood, The Widow Maker and Drowning by Numbers.

DIRECTING Don’t Worry About Me, Passerby, A Secret Audience, Bring Me Your Love and Sweet Revenge.

Mark Penfold

LEPIDUS / CAIUS LIGARIUS / SOOTHSAYER TRAINING Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

THEATRE includes Young Chekhov at the National Theatre; Platonov and Ivanov at Chichester; City of Angels at the Donmar Warehouse; Salome at Nuffield, Southampton; Volpone at Wilton’s Music Hall; The Crucible at Sheffield Crucible; Justifying War, The Colour of Justice, Srebrenica and Nuremberg at the Tricycle; Beyond a Joke on UK tour; The Tempest at Oxford Playhouse and Tokyo Globe; Shreds and Fancies at the Old Red Lion; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Privates on Parade, Absurd Person Singular, The White Devil, Macbeth, Heartbreak House, Habeas Corpus, Happy End and As You Like It at Oxford Playhouse;

and Terra Nova at Plymouth Theatre Royal.

TELEVISION includes The Alienist, Call the Midwife, The Musketeers, Inspector George Gently, Downton Abbey, Silk, William and Catherine: A Royal Love Story, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Holby City, 5 Days, Wire in the Blood, Family Affairs, Justifying War, A Touch of Frost, Take a Girl Like You, Second Sight, The Colour of Justice, Wing and a Prayer, Casualty, Crime Traveller, Annie’s Bar, Call Red, The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries, EastEnders, Lovejoy and Parnell and the Englishwoman.

FILM Dead in a Week, Fast Girls, Patiala House, Love’s Kitchen, Mysterious Creatures and Wondrous Oblivion.

Abraham Popoola TREBONIUS / STREET BAND

TRAINING Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. THEATRE includes The Secret Theatre and Boudica at Shakespeare’s Globe; Othello at the Tobacco Factory; The Crossing Plays at the Royal Court (LIFT Festival); Feral at the Old Red Lion; Tea at Ovalhouse; and Oxford Street for Dru. TELEVISION includes Crazy Diamond (Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K Dick) and Will.

Sid Sagar

FLAVIUS / POPILIUS LENA TRAINING National Youth Theatre and Identity School of Acting.

THEATRE includes Queen Anne for the RSC/ Theatre Royal Haymarket; The Invisible Hand at the Tricycle; The Tempest, Cymbeline, The Oresteia and The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe; Treasure at the Finborough; The History Boys on UK Tour; True Brits at HighTide/Edinburgh/Bush Theatre; Eternal Love for English Touring Theatre/Shakespeare’s Globe; and Orpheus and Eurydice for National Youth Theatre.

TELEVISION includes Press, Strike: Career of Evil, EastEnders, The Hollow Crown and The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.

FILM includes Ready Player One, Murder on the Orient Express and Karma Magnet.

RADIO includes ECCo. WRITING Two short plays, Raj and The State We’re In, produced by Little Pieces of Gold at Southwark Playhouse.

Nick Sampson

Ben Whishaw

THEATRE includes North by Northwest for Royal Alexandra Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath; Ross at Chichester; The Moderate Soprano at Hampstead; The Gathered Leaves at the Park; King Charles III and Romance at the Almeida; Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry at the Tricycle; and at the National Theatre: Great Britain, Othello, The Captain of Köpenick, Timon of Athens, Collaborators, Hamlet, London Assurance, His Dark Materials, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stuff Happens, Henry V, Tartuffe, The Coast of Utopia, The Relapse, The Winter’s Gale and The Madness of George III.

TRAINING Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

CINNA

TELEVISION includes Doc Martin, Genius: Einstein, Witness for the Prosecution, Apple Tree Yard, Endeavour, Home Fires, Capital, Downton Abbey, We’ll Take Manhattan, Silk, EastEnders, Monday Monday, Honest, The Commander, Whistleblowers, Afterlife, Bradford Riots, Britz, Diamond Geezer, Hustle, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Party Animals, This Life + 10, Trial & Retribution, Brittas Empire and Cold Lazarus.

FILM includes Lost City of Z, Our Kind of Traitor, An Education, Siam Sunset and The Madness of King George.

RADIO includes The Corrupted, House on Fire and Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Hannah Stokely

MARCUS BRUTUS

THEATRE includes Against and Bakkhai at the Almeida; The Crucible and The Pride in New York; Mojo and Peter and Alice in the West End; Cock at the Royal Court; Some Trace of Her, The Seagull and His Dark Materials at the National Theatre; Leaves of Glass at the Soho; Mercury Fur for Paines Plough; and title role in Hamlet at the Old Vic (Ian Charleson Award).

FILM includes Mary Poppins Returns, Paddingon and Paddington 2, A Hologram for the King, The Danish Girl, Spectre, The Muse, Suffragette, The Lobster, The Zero Theorem, In the Heart of the Sea, Lilting, Cloud Atlas, Skyfall, Days and Nights, The Tempest, Bright Star, Brideshead Revisited, The International, I’m Not There, Restraints of Beasts, Perfume, Stoned, Enduring Love, 77 Beds, Layer Cake, The Trench, My Brother Tom (Most Promising Newcomer Award, BIFA) and The Escort. He won the Regional Critics’ Rising Star Award at the 2013 Richard Attenborough UK Regional Film Awards.

TELEVISION includes A Very English Scandal, Queers: The Man on the Platform, London Spy, Foxtrot, Richard II (BAFTA for Best Leading Actor), The Hour, All Signs of Death, Criminal Justice (International Emmy for Best Performance by an Actor; Royal Television Society Award for Best Actor), Nathan Barley, Booze Cruise, Ready When You Are Mr McGill and Other People’s Children.

METELLUS CIMBER

THEATRE includes Stop the Play and Well at Trafalgar Studios; The Rivals at the Arcola; King Lear, After the Dance and Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at West Yorkshire Playhouse; Richard III, The Winter’s Tale and The Cherry Orchard for the Bridge Project at the Old Vic, BAM and on international tour; Summer and Smoke in the West End; The Glass Slipper at Southwark Playhouse; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Oxford Creation Theatre Company; W.O.M.A.N II at the Edinburgh Festival; Queen C at the Gate; and Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet for Shakespeare in Schools tour.

TELEVISION includes Any Human Heart, Vexed, The Cranford Chronicles, The Family Man, The Golden Hour and Holby City.

FILM includes Teen Spirit, The Falling, Skyfall, The Duchess, Chromophobia and Bright Young Things.

Kit Young

OCTAVIUS / STREET BAND TRAINING Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. THEATRE includes The Real Thing at Theatre Royal Bath; and The Extraordinary Cabaret of Dorian Gray at Underbelly.

SHORT FILM The Devil’s Harmony.

JULIUS CAESAR PRODUC TION

Nicholas Hytner DIRECTOR

Nicholas Hytner is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Bridge Theatre, where he has directed Young Marx. From 2003 to 2015, he was Director of the National Theatre, where his productions included Henry V, His Dark Materials, The History Boys, Stuff Happens, Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, The Habit of Art, England People Very Nice, Much Ado About Nothing, One Man, Two Guvnors, Timon of Athens and Othello.

FILM includes The Madness of King George and The Lady In The Van.

Bunny Christie PRODUCTION DESIGNER

THEATRE Many productions at the National Theatre, including The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (also West End and Broadway; Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Set Design), People Places and Things (also West End and touring), The Red Barn, Husbands and Sons (also at Royal Exchange, Manchester), The White Guard and A Streetcar Named Desire (Olivier Awards for both) and Baby Doll (Evening Standard Award). Other theatre includes Ink at the Almeida (also West End); Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle in the West End; the all-female Julius Caesar and Henry IV at the Donmar Warehouse (also St Ann’s Warehouse, New York); and Made in Dagenham at the Adelphi.

OPERA includes Medea for ENO; and Tosca and the world premiere of André Previn’s Brief Encounter for Houston Grand Opera.

FILM includes Swansong with John Gielgud (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film).

Christina Cunningham COSTUME DESIGNER

THEATRE includes A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer for the National Theatre and Complicite; People Places and Things and As You Like It for the National Theatre; The Nether for the Royal Court; Chimerica at the Almeida and in the West End; The Master and Margarita, A Disappearing Number, Shun-kin, Measure for Measure, A Minute Too Late, Pet Shop Boys Meet Eisenstein, Strange Poetry, The Elephant Vanishes, The Noise of Time, Light and Mnemonic for Complicite (at the Barbican, National Theatre, Almeida and Duchess; tours in the UK, Europe, the USA and Japan); and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for National Actors Theatre, New York.

OPERA includes The Rake’s Progress at Festival d’Aix; Benjamin, dernière nuit at Opéra de Lyon; The Snow Maiden and Hansel and Gretel for Opera North; Tristan and Isolde for ENO; The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Importance of Being Earnest at the Royal Opera House; A Dog’s Heart at Dutch National Opera, ENO, La Scala, Milan and Opéra de Lyon; and Nabucco for Nancy Opera.

DANCE includes Sun for the Hofesh Schechter Company at Sadler’s Wells and on international tours; and Just for Show for DV8 at the National Theatre and on international tours.

Bruno Poet LIGHTING DESIGNER

THEATRE includes Saint George and the Dragon, Frankenstein, London Road, Timon of Athens, Treasure Island, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, From Morning to Midnight and Travelling Light at the National Theatre; Fortune’s Fool and Sweet Bird of Youth at the Old Vic; Coram Boy at Bristol Old Vic; Midnight’s Children and The Two Gentlemen of Verona for the RSC; Miss Saigon (also Broadway/Japan/UK tour) and From Here to Eternity in the West End; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for West Yorkshire Playhouse; Oklahoma! for Grange Park Opera; and Carousel for Opera North.

OPERA & BALLET include Marco Polo for Guangzhon Opera House; Carmen for Bregenzer Festspiele; Connectome, Other Stories and Les Enfants Terribles for the Royal Ballet; The Tempest for Birmingham Royal Ballet; Otello, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, I Due Foscari, Don Giovanni and La Donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House; Akhnaten, Aida and Carmen for ENO; Al Gran Sole Carico d’Amore for Salzburg Festival; Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Carmen for Den Norske Opera; Freischütz, Cavelleria Rusticana, Il Pagliacci and Cunning Little Vixen for Royal Danish Opera; and Macbeth and Trovatore for Opera Monte Carlo.

AWARDS His design for Rusalka at Sydney Opera House won the Australian Green Room Award. He won Olivier and Knight of Illumination awards for lighting Frankenstein at the National Theatre; and a Knight of Illumination award for lighting Sigur Rós’ 2012–13 world tour (subsequently also designing lighting for their current world tour).

Paul Arditti SOUND DESIGNER

RECENT SOUND DESIGNS include The Jungle at the Young Vic; Labour of Love in the West End; Young Marx at The Bridge; Hamlet for Kenneth Branagh Company; Caroline Or Change at Chichester and Hampstead; Beginning (also West End), Mosquitoes, Amadeus (Olivier Award nomination), The Hard Problem, The Threepenny Opera, wonder.land, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Everyman, Great Britain (also West End), Behind The Beautiful Forevers, King Lear, London Road and Collaborators, all at the National Theatre; Mary Stuart (also West End), Bacchae, Little Revolution and American Psycho at the Almeida; King Charles III at the Almeida, West End, UK tour and Broadway; The Glass Menagerie at Edinburgh International Festival and West End; The Emperor at the Young Vic and HOME Manchester; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, If You Kiss Me Kiss Me, Measure for Measure, Feast and Three Sisters at the Young Vic; A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic and New York; The Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic and West End; Red Velvet at the Tricycle and West End; and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the West End. AWARDS include Olivier, Tony and Drama Desk for Billy Elliot the Musical; Olivier for Saint Joan; Evening Standard for Festen; Drama Desk for The Pillowman and Four Baboons Adoring the Sun; Tony nominations for Mary Stuart (Donmar & Broadway) and One Man, Two Guvnors (National Theatre, West End and Broadway). Paul Arditti is an associate director of the National Theatre. paularditti.com

Nick Powell MUSIC

THEATRE includes The Ferryman and The Nether (both also West End), Bad Roads, X, Unreachable, The Mistress Contract, The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, Talk Show, Narrative, Get Santa!, The Vertical Hour, The Priory and Relocated at the Royal Court; Othello at the National Theatre; People Places and Things at Stadsteatern, Stockholm; City of Glass for 59 Productions/ Lyric Hammersmith; Alice in Wonderland at the Lyceum, Edinburgh; Running Wild, Peter Pan, All My Sons, Lord of the Flies and The Crucible at Regent’s Park/UK tour; The Tempest at Norfolk & Norwich Festival; The Haunting of Hill House at Liverpool Playhouse; Lanark: A Life in Three Acts at Citizens, Glasgow/Edinburgh Festival; Of Mice and Men for Birmingham Rep/ tour; Secret Theatre: Show 6 for Lyric Hammersmith/Edinburgh Festival Fringe;

The Life of Galileo, Richard III, The Drunks and God in Ruins for the RSC; Urtain, Marat/ Sade and Los Macbez for Animalario/CDN Madrid; Paradise for Rhur Triennale; Bank on It for Theatre Rites; ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Cheek by Jowl; Penumbra and Tito Andronico for Animalario Madrid; The Danton Affair for Stadsteater, Gothenburg; The Wolves in the Walls for Improbable/National Theatre of Scotland/Tramway/Lyric Hammersmith/ UK tour/New Victory, New York; Realism for National Theatre of Scotland/Edinburgh Festival; Panic for Improbable; and The Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse.

AWARDS include the Spanish Premio Max for Best Musical Composition for Scenic Arts.

OTHER WORK Nick Powell also writes extensively for TV and film. He is half of OSKAR, who have released two albums and produced installations for the V&A and CCA, and also written live soundtracks for the Prada, Milan. In 2017, he scored Bloom, the opening event of the Edinburgh International Festival; and Reflections for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. His chamber piece, Cold Calling: The Arctic Project, was presented at Birmingham Rep with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2016.

Kate Waters FIGHT DIRECTOR

THEATRE Young Marx at The Bridge; Caroline Or Change at Chichester Festival Theatre and Hampstead. For the National Theatre: The Deep Blue Sea, The Plough and the Stars, As You Like It, Husbands and Sons, Rules for Living, Dara, Here Lies Love, Hotel, Home, Damned by Despair, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (also West End), The Comedy of Errors, One Man, Two Guvnors (also West End), Frankenstein, Season’s Greetings, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Welcome to Thebes, Women Beware Women and War Horse (also West End). For the RSC: Love’s Sacrifice, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, The Homecoming, King Lear, American Trade, Two Noble Kinsmen, Faustus and The Alchemist.

Other recent work includes The Wind in the Willows, Hangmen, The Ruling Class, From Here to Eternity, Bugsy Malone and Richard III with Martin Freeman in the West End; Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House; Henry IV at the Donmar Warehouse and in New York; Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe; Porgy and Bess and Lord of the Flies at Regent’s Park; Noises Off at the Old Vic and West End; The Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic; Written on Skin at Aix en Provence and Royal Opera House; and numerous productions for major regional theatres.

TV She is a regular fight director for Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and Emmerdale.

REHE ARSAL S

The company

REHE ARSAL S

Nick Sampson

Zachary Hart

Emily Burns Mark Penfold

REHE ARSAL S

Kit Young and Sid Sagar

Songs used in Julius Caesar ‘Roar’ (Perry, Gottwald, Max, McKee, Walter) Kobalt Music Pub/ BMG Rights Management (UK)/Warner Chappell Music ‘Eye of the Tiger’ (Peterik, Sullivan) Sony/ATV Music/Warner Chappell Music ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ (Gallagher) Sony Music ‘Day is Done’ (Drake) BMG Rights Management (UK) ‘We’re Not Gonna Take it’ (Snider, Snider) Universal Music Pub ‘Seven Nation Army’ (White) Universal Music Pub

C

A new play by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman