If you fancy binging on Roman history, Imperium is for you

Despite the more than 1,500 years that have passed since the fall of their empire, Western civilisation has yet to shake off an obsession with the ancient Romans. We base our legal codes, government structures and grammatical constructs upon theirs. We borrow their architecture to express authority and their decorative patterns to convey elegance. We study them as role models. (Though who we lionise has a lot to do with how we see ourselves. Napoleon liked conquering emperors; America's founding fathers were fond of Cincinnatus, a statesman called out of retirement to meet a crisis who, once he'd put things right, laid aside the reigns of government and returned to his farm rather than holding on to supreme power.) I’m even drafting this article at a spa in the English countryside based, and decorated, on a Roman model.

Whether they really were like us or not is irrelevant. The ancient Romans have become the eternal mirror in which we seek a baseline for ourselves.

Thus it’s little surprise that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Cicero plays, now in a limited run at London’s Gielgud theatre, feel as relevant as watching the nightly news. Together, they're called Imperium: the first is Conspirator, the second Dictator. Though they’re a good deal more entertaining and, despite our hero’s end by political assassination, send us home with an uplifting validation of trying to be the good guy.

The relevance comes from the populist uprisings at the heart of this chunk of history. After years of civil strife and economic hardship ... mostly caused by squabbling factions within the aristocratic families that comprised the Republic's Senate ... the people lost patience. They began to look for salvation in a line of strongmen: Clodius, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus. Each was an aristocrat, yet each managed to make the people forget that, getting the mobs on side by convincing them that they were men of the people. Paternalistic good guys who would, you might say, "drain the swamp". Whether the shift from Republic to Empire actually did help the common man is something historians still argue about. But there's no doubt that their support of these strongmen helped to bring on the change, and that in that evolution they got more "bread and circuses" but less rule of law. You can see why it's a hot topic for a modern London stage, and there were plenty of thinly-veiled references to politics on  both sides of the Atlantic that set off wry laughter throughout the theatre.

This production team has form. The Royal Shakespeare Company and writer Mike Poulton had already teamed up to convert Hillary Mantel's books about Cromwell into plays that later became a much-acclaimed BBC drama. Now we get seven hours of political intrigue, historical epic and witty repartee split into two plays, all drawn from Robert Harris' three-part fictionalised biography of the great Roman statesman, lawyer and orator Cicero. It's a brilliant fit. Cicero's life ... dancing back and forth between sides, bouncing in and out of power, trapped in impossible situations that give him no good choices ... is properly Shakespearean. The experience of seeing both of these plays is a close cousin to watching Henry IV parts I and II and Henry V in close succession. (We went on a Monday and a Friday. If you want to "binge watch" you can do it all on a Saturday. Whichever way you do it, book tickets all at once for a discount.)

Richard McCabe's Cicero (above) is a wonder. McCabe is one of those familiar faces you can't quite place; then you go to his IMDB profile and see that he's been a supporting actor in a long string of notable British TV dramas and films. Here, he is the centre of the action for much of the seven hours. Given that Cicero was one of the most famous word-spinners in history, that means he's spouting beautifully constructed, fairly complex prose most of the time. The sheer feat of memorising the lines of a role this enormous is mind boggling. Add acting that gives us a totally believable, emotionally complex character who rockets from heights of joy to the depths of despair. McCabe gives us a complex and totally believable self-made man who's never quite able to get past his humble beginnings. The self doubt in that situation also gives Cicero a towering ego and dangerous susceptibility. We love the man McCabe gives us, but we also often want to scream at him in frustration.

That role is played, instead, by his slave ... eventually freed and clearly his best friend ... Tiro, presented here by an energetic and amiable Joseph Kloska. He's an essential narrator to the action, and as a foil to Cicero's character weaknesses he gives us some of the plays' best humour. One of the joys of this adaptation, in fact, is just how much humour Poulton pulls out of the books. It was all there (and, indeed, in Cicero's writing in the first place), but didn't stand out as much in the vast sprawl of the plot. The clever wordplay here is front and centre.

Inevitably, of course, you lose a lot when transferring three huge novels to the stage. The first, which gave us Cicero's early battles to establish himself in the capital, is covered in a few summary lines. About half of the plot of the third book also hits the cutting room floor. The stage play narrows the action down to the rise of the Caesars ... Julius, then Augustus ... and Cicero's role in their story. It works. I missed the private lives, however. To wedge this into even seven hours, Imperium becomes a political drama. Cicero's wife Terentia and daughter Julia are important to the first play and have only bit roles in the second. Their stories are much more interesting in the book. The good news? Book and play are very separate things, both totally enjoyable. Do both and double your satisfaction.

I understand, however, that seven hours of Roman political drama and admirable wordplay isn't exactly popular entertainment (despite the populist themes). Despite the staggering quality of the production, there were good tickets available on both nights. I suspect that will be the case through the close of the run in early September. So ... if you've ever binge-watched the TV series Rome, or love Shakespeare's history plays ... catch this while you have a chance. If Love Island is as much intellectual stimulation as you can stand over this long, hot summer, best to give this one a pass.