Mark Antony refers to the dead Brutus at the end of this play as "the noblest Roman of them all", but there is precious little nobility in the world of Lucy Bailey's production, in which the urban mob of the first half is if anything more violent than the contending armies of the second. As the audience enters, two men onstage are fighting animalistically to the death; the opening of the play proper shows just as atavistic a version of the feast of Lupercal, before we get into the business of Caesar and his assassins.
This is, in effect, the Rome of the BBC/HBO television series of that name, which so divided opinions in its graphic depiction of what is claimed to be the unsalubrious historical reality. Programme essays here argue that "noble Rome" is an invention of the last century or two, yet Shakespeare's own work, not least his early narrative poem "The Rape of Lucrece", gives the lie to such a view. Bailey and designer William Dudley overplay their hand with this grim vision, with its video backdrops of seething crowds and the Capitol in CGI flames.
