| Imperium: The Cicero Plays | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Mike Poulton |
| Characters | Cicero, Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great |
| Date premiered | 16 November 2017 |
| Place premiered | Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | Rome, 70 BC - 43 BC |
Imperium: The Cicero Plays is a stage adaptation of the Cicero trilogy of novels by Robert Harris (Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator). It was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from 16 November 2017 to 10 February 2018, directed by Gregory Doran and with Richard McCabe as Cicero.[1] It played at the Gielgud Theatre in London from 14 June to 8 September 2018.[2]
The cycle consists of six plays, each roughly one hour long, performed as two groups of three, all narrated by Cicero's slave and later freedman Tiro.
The first group consists of the plays Cicero, Catiline and Clodius. It includes a brief flashback to Cicero's prosecution of Verres in 70 BC but mainly runs from Cicero's election campaign for consul in 64 BC until his exile in 58 BC, adapting material from the end of Imperium, the whole of Lustrum and the start of Dictator.
The second group adapts the remainder of Dictator into three plays entitled Caesar, Mark Anthony and Octavian. The first opens as Cicero returns to Italy in the wake of Caesar's victory at Pharsalus in 48 BC, followed by a summing-up of the recent Civil War and Caesar's assumption of dictatorial powers. The rest of the three plays then follows Cicero's reaction to the Ides of March and his failed attempts to save the Roman Republic by playing Mark Anthony and Octavian off against each other, culminating in Cicero's execution in 43 BC. The final play ends with an epilogue by Tiro, covering the later fates of Brutus, Cassius, Octavian and Mark Anthony and imagining Cicero's afterlife in words from his own Dream of Scipio.