A necessary end

I went with an old friend to see Imperium: Dictator, the Royal Shakespeare Company's transfer from Stratford of a play by the acclaimed Mike Poulton based on the Cicero novels by the acclaimed Robert Harris.

It was long and I was just interested enough not to leave during either of the two intervals but I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't even believe in them, despite the fact that they once really existed.

I liked the set (I would have photographed it if I could) and the acting was fine but, in defiance of the drama of the times - Caesar's assassination, political plotting and subterfuge, civil war, the rise of a new dictator, Cicero's downfall - there was no shape to the story and the writing didn't seem to know where it was going.

Were we supposed to take from the Brexit joke ('some little island beyond Gaul, can't remember its name, not sure whether it's in Europe or not'), unfunny to Remainer and Leaver alike, that this was an allegory for modern times? If so, the connection faded away as the writing meandered off after something else. Cicero was considered the greatest orator of his time. I'm not a fan of rhetoric but I'd have liked language with a bit more muscle.

But I was in good company during the intervals and on the walk back to the moonlit station.