ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Imperial decline
An RSC adaptation of Robert Harris's novels about power politics in ancient Rome loses something in translation from page to stage, says GORDON PARSONS
Power play: Imperium Part II
[Ikin Yum]
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
Imperium Parts I and II
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
MIKE POULTON, adapter of Robert Harris’s trilogy of novels narrating the life of the great Roman orator Cicero, clearly recognises the problems anyone dramatising a novel has to cope with.
There's not only often the weight of plot detail involved, he's said, but also the demands on the linear narrative progression in theatre where, unlike in the novels, audiences cannot check back on incidents and characters.
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