It is unnerving how relevant the action of this play about the crisis in Roman politics is for our own times. How to deal with an alarmingly popular leader who is ready to ride the wave of his success through to absolute power? And if we DO decide to deal with it (through assassination or whatever) are we aware of what reaction the ensuing ‘dogs of war’ might release?

 

Interconnected with the political is of course the personal. In the emotional triangles of commitment between Brutus-Portia-Cassius, on the one side, and Caesar-Calpurnia-Mark Antony, on the other, we experience the human tensions that reflect the political action. And in the character of Brutus we have the first of Shakespeare’s honourable, indecisive men – a modernist anti-hero.

 

This is a great play to work on. More than any other play of its time, it is a drama of the people – the workers, the street cleaners, the servants, the poets, the soldiers caught up in this battle that is not of their own making. We kept being reminded of the suffering citizens of Ukraine. But we have not pointed any specific instance. We allow the play to speak for itself. We hope you are carried along by the power of its inexorable drive.

 

— Richard Murphet