Theatre review: Julius Caesar (RSC / RST & tour)

Continuing both the year's major Shakespearean theme of plays that only survive because of the First Folio, and my personal one of traipsing around the country to see Shakespeare plays I don't particularly like, the RSC's 2023 season moves onto Julius Caesar. Like Romeo and Juliet, this is one of the plays I find starts well enough then resolutely loses steam in its second half, and my favourite productions tend to be those that play without an interval, allowing the tension of the early conspiracy scenes to keep the more muddled later battle scenes going. The script is also pretty ambiguous about the validity of the conspiracy and the accusations against Caesar, allowing directors to explore a variety of possibilities in different productions. Atri Banerjee's production in the RST and on tour does have an interval; and while it certainly has a visual identity, what it's actually using it to say about the story is much less obvious.

Theatre review: Kenny Morgan

Looking to somewhat more recent history than his adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Mike Poulton takes us to London a few years after World War II for Kenny Morgan. The titular Kenny (Paul Keating) was an actor and lover of Terence Rattigan, but by the time we meet him in 1949 his career had stalled and he'd given up his life of comfort with the older playwright who was at that point at the height of his fame, moving into the damp flat of his new, younger lover. But life with Alec (Pierro Niel-Mee) clearly didn't have an upside, as the play opens with Kenny attempting suicide in front of the gas fire. The smell of gas alerts his neighbours, who save him in time; not wanting to alert the police they instead call the first name in Kenny's address book: Rattigan (Simon Dutton.)