Imperium: The Cicero Plays
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Until Feb 10 3hrs 30mins
Strap on your sandals. This is the theatre version of Robert Harris’s Cicero novels, three books compressed into two thumping great plays of seven hours total, two intervals in each.
It’s boys’ theatre: expect togas, men spluttering ‘you mark my words’ and utterly brutal politics. These impressive dramas are long on power and conspiracy. But for more mature theatre-goers, they are disappointingly short on the sex, grapes and depravity that made the BBC’s I, Claudius such a joy.
Richard McCabe as Cicero is terrific in the part, giving us a slightly camp figure, posturing, vain, and with a cutting wit
Lily Nichol as Camilla and Siobhan Redmond as Terentia. The plays chart the rise and assassination of Julius Caesar and the fatal emergence of Caesar’s adopted teenage son Octavian in the doomed Republic
Nevertheless, Harris managed to bring to life the politician, wit and orator Cicero, whose epic era the books illuminate, and Mike Poulton’s adaptation (he dramatised the Wolf Hall novels for the RSC) is a mighty filleting job.
The plays chart the rise and assassination of Julius Caesar and the fatal emergence of Caesar’s adopted teenage son Octavian in the doomed Republic.
Cicero acts as a Roman umpire, guarding the law and finally coming to a nasty end himself as power slips from his grip. Richard McCabe is terrific in the part, giving us a slightly camp figure, posturing, vain, and with a cutting wit.
Joe Dixon is both an explosive Catiline and an alcoholic Mark Antony. These plays are nothing if not immersive. At the end, you emerge still thinking you’re in ancient Rome
He forms a comedy duo with his slave and secretary Tiro (Joseph Kloska in a sweet performance of patience and tenderness), who is not above ticking off his owner.
Director Gregory Doran coaxes sterling performances from his cast of noble Romans. Joe Dixon is both an explosive Catiline and an alcoholic Mark Antony, Oliver Johnstone is the priggish Octavian, and Peter de Jersey smirks as the young Julius Caesar.
Cicero’s divorced wife (Siobhan Redmond) comes a poor second to his career.
The sheer weight of events reminded me of the quote about history being ‘just one damn thing after another’. But these plays are nothing if not immersive. At the end, you emerge still thinking you’re in ancient Rome.
La Soirée
Aldwych Theatre, London Until Feb 3 2hrs
Rating: 
This acrobatic cabaret has gone posh. From the Edinburgh Fringe to circus tent, this year it finds itself in the grandeur of the Aldwych Theatre.
What a mixed bag it is. There are repeat appearances from a couple called Daredevil Chicken, spitting masticated bananas and supplying the evening’s vein of gross-out comedy.
Leon Fagbemi and and L J Marles in La Serviette. The smouldering, erotic entwinings of Leon & Klodi, for example, didn’t ripple my pecs
But of skilled circus there’s no shortage of content. Two Indian guys in loincloths on one pole do an act of unbelievable strength, speed and limb-flipping thrills. The wild, panther-like Michele Clark and her hula-hoops is possibly the best thing in the show.
Lea Hinz on an aerial hoop is so bendy you wonder if she’s got a skeleton.
With pulverising music, sexual overtness and sweary comedy, this is a raucous, boozy, adult evening designed for the party season
Other acts are colder. The smouldering, erotic entwinings of Leon & Klodi, for example, didn’t ripple my pecs. And a lady called Fancy Chance circles at speed overhead, hanging by her hair. Impressive, but you wonder how much it hurts.
Men, you should beware of the on-stage seats if you don’t want to be groped. With pulverising music, sexual overtness and sweary comedy, this is a raucous, boozy, adult evening designed for the party season.
The Woman In White
Charing Cross Theatre, London Until Feb 10 2hrs 20mins
Rating:
This is the first revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened 13 years ago. It starred Michael Crawford (as the obese baddie Count Fosco) in a fat suit with a white pet rat.
The suit – or possibly the rat – made him very ill and he had to leave the production, which closed after 19 months, a very short run for a Lloyd Webber show.
Chris Peluso as American accented Sir Percival Glyde encounters the Woman in White
In this modest staging there are strong performances: Carolyn Maitland, as Marian, is the backbone of the show and makes a good pairing with Anna O’Byrne (above) as her vulnerable half-sister Laura
It is good to be reacquainted with this excellent score, even though you can see how Wilkie Collins’s Victorian chiller of a novel was fatally reduced into something much less spine-tingling in Charlotte Jones’s libretto.
In this modest staging there are strong performances: Greg Castiglioni twinkles as Fosco; Carolyn Maitland, as Marian, is the backbone of the show and makes a good pairing with Anna O’Byrne (above) as her vulnerable half-sister Laura.
The latter’s life is ruined by the depraved English baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, whom Chris Peluso plays with an American accent.
Though the production soars musically, this tale of love, murder and madness could do with a lot more plausibility. But it’s a lush score, beautifully sung and definitely one for Lloyd Webber buffs.
The Open House
Ustinov Studio, Bath Until Sat 1hr 20mins
Rating:
A nameless family is assembled to celebrate their parents’ wedding anniversary. Mother spouts inanities with a smile. Father is vile, sarcastic and in a wheelchair. Daughter, Son and Uncle put up with him.
American writer Will Eno’s play at first looks like a boring living room get-together. But halfway through, characters start to walk off stage and come back on as other people.
Michael Boyd directs a superb cast including Greg Hicks as the paralysed patriarch and Teresa Banham (above) as his wife
Tables are suddenly turned. One sort of play turns out to be quite another – more baffling, more subversively weird. If short on actual drama, the play is annoying and intriguing for the same reason: it’s utterly off-kilter.
Michael Boyd directs a superb cast including Greg Hicks as the paralysed patriarch and Teresa Banham, above, as his wife.