Edward Hall's exciting Julius Caesar moves from Stratford to the Barbican with all its vital organs intact. Hall trims the text, drops the interval and turns Caesar's Rome into a fascist city-state. But his real success lies in exploring the Shakespearean link between private flaws and public actions and demonstrating that political rhetoric is invariably a cover for reality.
The key relationship here is between Brutus and Cassius. Both think there are legitimate reasons for assassinating Caesar; both, however, are crippled by personal defects. Greg Hicks's Brutus, in particular, is a masterly study of the self-regarding idealist who is tactically wrong at every turn and who believes words can camouflage truth.
Oblivious to his own absurdity, Hicks says of Caesar, "Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully," as if high-mindedness made any difference to murder. After the killing, Hicks urges the conspirators to march to the marketplace and, "waving our red weapons o'er our heads, let's all cry peace, freedom and liberty". The inherent irony is underscored by the fact that, in this production, the self-same words have been appropriated by Caesar's authoritarian state.
If Hicks's Brutus is the archetypal self-deceiver, Tim Pigott-Smith's Cassius is the kind of political fanatic who cannot tolerate human imperfection. He is right about every tactical decision, where Brutus is hopelessly wrong, but he despises Caesar for his physical vulnerability as much as he does himself for "that rash humour which my mother gave me". But the moment I shall remember is when, on the battlefield, Pigott-Smith says sadly: "Messala, this is my birthday." It is as if, with death confronting him, he suddenly recognises the life totally unlived.
These two performances bind together a production imbued with modern cynicism about the political process and the misuse of language. Ian Hogg's Caesar is a vain, strutting figure delighting in his ticker-tape parades. Tom Mannion's Mark Antony is a slippery rhetorician who relishes his manipulative skills. But it is Brutus who is the most instantly recognisable modern figure in his use of abstract nouns to justify political ends. In a week when President Bush has invoked America's defence of "liberty and justice" as a cover for his own domestic agenda, the play seems more horrifically pertinent than ever.
· Until April 6. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
