Kenneth Tynan once described this as "a bad great play" and I think I know what he meant. Camus here tackles power, tyranny and freedom and even invokes Shakespeare. Yet the end result feels more like a philosophical debate than a drama rooted in reality.
Camus presents his hero at a point of crisis after the death of his sister and lover, Drusilla. Granted the absolute power of a Roman emperor, Caligula decides to give a new century "the gift of meaninglessness". In practice, this means arbitrarily killing patricians, raping their wives, stealing their estates, impersonating the goddess Venus and pursuing every passing whim. Under the guise of madness, the hero conducts a social experiment to prove that the exercise of unlimited freedom confirms life's futility. But, led by the stoical Cherea, the patricians finally and murderously rebel.
Although Camus had clearly read his Suetonius, this is not an historical reconstruction: as excellent translator David Greig points out, Camus is really creating absurdist theatre. But the problem, as with so many later examples of the genre, is that once the key ideas have been stated, the drama has nowhere to go. Caligula sets out his stall early. By the time we get to the climax, he is still arguing that "life is meaningless" against Cherea's belief that we all need the illusion of security to keep us sane. It's the kind of debate you can imagine being conducted in Paris cafes in 1945; but putting it into a Roman context doesn't automatically enhance it.
The play is theatrical without being dramatic, and Michael Grandage's production does everything possible to give it visual life. Christopher Oram's set is dominated by a back wall of mottled gold and allows scope for a series of ocular coups: at one point Caligula raises a giant mirror from a standing pool and later a ruched curtain rises to reveal the disguised emperor. Even the conspirators' final stabbing of Caligula has a feverishness that reminds us of Julius Caesar.
But the play stands or falls by its lead actor and Michael Sheen is highly impressive. With his Barrault-like features and piercing eyes, he suggests both that there is a deadly logic to Caligula's experiment and that he is prey to every passing impulse. At one point, he attacks his court-poet with a single hair-raising leap across a chair and table. Instead of routine madness, Sheen gives us a hypnotic study of controlled neurosis. He is strongly backed by Diana Kent as his loyal mistress, and Raymond Coulthard as the cool Cherea. Yet, for all the skill displayed, you feel this is a poetic allegory without any real people.
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