But Harris, in shaping his stories through the self-made lawyer, politician and philosopher, offers a very different perspective on the events of the 40s BC than Shakespeare.Ĭicero was the sort of politician I’ve always had a lot of time for – the keep-the-show-on-the-road type The new plays offer a fascinating companion piece to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and indeed their settings and characters overlap. Shakespeare, like every grammar school boy of his time, was brought up on Cicero, Ovid and Seneca. Like Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels previously adapted by Poulton, Harris’s books are a clever choice for the RSC. The productions, directed by Gregory Doran, have already had a successful run in Stratford-upon-Avon, and now are opening at the Gielgud theatre in London. But now, to his delight, he is getting to watch his novels about the Roman politician Cicero adapted into a pair of stage dramas by Mike Poulton. That dream faded away as a young man, he worked for BBC current affairs programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and then a columnist for the Sunday Times. In his teenage years he longed to become a playwright and was an avid writer of pieces for his friends. T here is a particular pleasure for Robert Harris, the author of bestselling novels such as Fatherland, Pompeii and Munich, in hanging out with actors, and floating around backstage with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
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