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Let’s be honest: a two-part, seven-hour-long RSC adaptation of Robert Harris’s trilogy of ‘Cicero’ novels tracing the end of the Roman republic is going to have a fairly self-selecting audience. If you think ‘Imperium’ sounds like a brilliant idea, you’ll probably love it; if it sounds unutterably tedious, it’s probably not for you.
Me, I was on the fence, but I more or less got on board with Gregory Doran’s Brobdingnagian brace of shows.
If you’re braced for endless hours of ‘hail, Caesar’-isms, the bigest surprise is how Mike Poulton’s adaptations are actually both snappy and amusing. The two three-and-a-half-hour chunks - dubbed ‘Conspirator’ and ‘Dictator’ - are actually subdivided into three hour-long chapters, delineated by intervals. So the action is fast. And there are laughs aplenty, mostly from the constantly preening behaviour of its hero, lawyer and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (Richard McCabe), as seen though the eyes of his long-suffering secretary and biographer Tiro (Joseph Kloska).
It tells a largely interesting series of historical yarns, that offer some overlap with – and expansion on – Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. Though there are some panto-ishly silly fourth wall-breaking references to Trump and whatnot, ‘Imperium’ doesn’t need any of that
in its best sections, which thrillingly depict a civilised republic with robust checks and balances going into a democratic freefall, simply unable to withstand the cynical populism and virulent self-interest of Peter de Jersey’s Julius Caesar.
Still, as a complete seven-hour endeavour, ‘Imperium’ is a bit enervating.
It was presumably somewhere inspired by the success of the RSC’s similarly-lengthy 2014 stage version of Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ books. But the likeable McCabe’s cuddly, self- regarding Cicero isn’t nearly the protagonist that Ben Miles’s enigmatic Thomas Cromwell was. Even De Jersey’s largely excellent Caesar doesn’t feel particularly plausible, more supervillain than politician.
One of the most trying things about it all is how static Doran’s production is. Sure, too much fiddling with sets and props and you bung on another couple of hours. But for much of ‘Imperium’ the action is little more than people standing talking to each other on the imposing steps of Anthony Ward’s unchanging set.
Often it feels like you wouldn’t be missing much if you closed your eyes - the whole thing has the air of a Radio 4 daytime drama serial. Not least because everyone’s so damn posh. I have very mixed feelings about making Ancient Rome seem like a slight more stab happy version of contemporary Westminster. On the one hand, it makes the last days of the Republic seem vividly plausible. On the other, there’s something faintly bathetic about making a 2,000-year-old culture vastly different to our own come across like an unusually gristly episode of ‘Yes Minister’.
‘Imperium’ is an impressive accomplishment, not least for the sheer stamina of the cast, who barely get a moment off on a two-show-day. You will undeniably learn a lot, and laugh a fair bit. But it’s hard not to shake the feeling that it’s made redundant by Shakespeare’s own ‘Julius Caesar’, which covers the same general events with more poetry, in under half the time.