Julius Caesar The Bridge Theatre, London Until Apr 15, 2 hrs
You might want to take ear defenders. A deafening live band opens this show, blasting out heavy metal. It’s a sort of ‘jamming for Julius’ rally with the standing-only ticket-holders milling about with the actors and musicians. T-shirts, cola and nuts are on sale, and on opening night the crowd was loving it.
Then on comes a presidential Caesar, David Calder, beaming with power.
There’s a great cast here: David Morrissey is a bearded Mark Antony, Ben Whishaw a prim Brutus, Michelle Fairley a sex-changed Cassius.
Ben Whishaw plays a prim Brutus, duly swottish in his overcoat and specs. Occasionally, he rather sweetly sounds like Paddington Bear, his recent film role
Brutus is the most thoughtful of Caesar’s assassins. Whishaw is duly swottish in his overcoat and specs. He’s your classic tortured intellectual. Occasionally, he also rather sweetly sounds like Paddington Bear, his recent film role.
Director Nicholas Hytner’s political update feels (mostly) justified. This, after all, is a totally modern play about regime change and the anarchy that fills the ensuing power vacuum. With no interval, the show is done as a fast, brutal, political thriller.
We, the audience, are the plebs. Who do we support? The ‘honourable’ Brutus, or Mark Antony, whose fake-humble ‘friends, Romans, countrymen’ ear-lending speech is delivered over the oozing corpse of Caesar?
There’s a great cast here: David Morrissey is wonderfully conniving as a bearded Mark Antony. We, the audience, are the plebs. But who should we support?
Before you know it, mob rule breaks out. Cinna the poet is torn apart in the streets just for having the same name as Cinna the conspirator. The opportunist Antony – Morrissey is wonderfully conniving – betrays his promises, and Brutus makes one stupid decision after another.
The fog of war is superbly evoked at the ‘field of Philippi’. Among the debris, Brutus is fatally undermined by the ill omen of Caesar’s anorak-wearing ghost. And the story comes full circle: failure and suicide await the conspirators, of whom Abraham Popoola is particularly memorable as Trebonius.
I admit I struggled with Fairley’s casting as Cassius. We are seemingly meant to ignore the fact that the actor playing him is female, so why then are the pronouns changed to make the character a woman? I know he’s very dead, but doesn’t Shakespeare have any rights?
But overall, this is a fast, highly political production, with grit, gore and panache. I suspect its deliberate appeal to a younger crowd will pay off.
The Culture: A Farce In Two Acts Hull Truck Theatre Until Feb 17
2hrs 20mins
Rating: 
The action of this farce is staged now, in the offices of ‘Hull 2017’, as the city hands over the 2021 city-of-culture laurels to Coventry, and the team has to present a grand cultural audit to the visiting Minister.
Andrew Dunn plays a man who has come to the council to complain and gets mistaken for the visiting leader of Coventry City Council. Then rival volunteer guides and weird artists with sex toys combine to cause Lizzie (Amelia Donkor), the ‘monitoring and evaluation’ team leader, to hyperventilate. It’s all vaguely reminiscent of the BBC’s mickey-take of itself, W1A.
The Culture: A Farce In Two Acts stars Lizzie (Amelia Donkor), she plays the ‘monitoring and evaluation’ team leader
There’s a different celebrity appearance every night (I got Paul Martin from the BBC’s Flog It!) and enjoyable, angry contributions (on speaker phone) from Hullensian stars Maureen Lipman and Tom Courtenay as themselves.
But this mostly unfunny, underpowered production seldom takes wing.
It’s written by the brilliant James Graham (author of This House, Ink, Labour Of Love and Quiz), who seems to have a new play in the West End every month. Judging by this lame effort, he could do with a holiday.
A Passage To India Royal & Derngate, Northampton On tour to Mar24 2 hrs 40 mins
Rating: 
When they were Eton schoolboys, Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston were among those taught by the drama master Mr Dormandy. Simon Dormandy, now freelancing, here directs (with Sebastian Armesto) his adaptation of the classic 1924 E M Forster novel set in colonial India.
It concerns Adela (Phoebe Pryce), who, on a visit from England to see her fiance Ronny, is shown around some sinister local caves. She later makes a vague and false accusation of sexual assault against her guide, an innocent Muslim doctor.
A Passage To India is staged with live Indian music and lots of choral sound effects, and Asif Khan, shown here in the centre, superbly captures the hurt and humiliation of Aziz
The scenario has the makings of a modern play. But the book is more concerned about the corrosive effects of colonialism.
It is staged with live Indian music and lots of choral sound effects, and Asif Khan superbly captures the hurt and humiliation of Aziz. This show is a pleasure, but perhaps too condensed and stagey to inspire.
Mary Stuart Duke of York’s Theatre London Until Mar 31, touring to Apr 28 3hrs 5mins
Rating: 
Actresses Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams spin a coin at the start of the play to decide who will play Elizabeth I and who Mary Queen of Scots in this acclaimed production freely adapted (from Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 original) and directed by Robert Icke.
The tension comes from Elizabeth’s dilemma of whether to execute the imprisoned Mary, a claimant to the English throne. It’s beefed up by a made-up meeting between the two.
Actresses Lia Williams (left) and Juliet Stevenson (right) spin a coin at the start of the play to decide who will play Elizabeth I and who Mary Queen of Scots in this acclaimed production
I saw Stevenson play Elizabeth – imperious, short-tempered and erotically entwined with John Light’s treacherous Leicester. Lia Williams was the more spiritual, embittered Mary. A heavy but engrossing evening of dirty Tudor politics – and two smashing performances whichever way the coin falls.