He left the RSC for good in 2002 and has continued to work with Propeller on such productions as A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2003 and Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew in 2007. He became artistic director of Hampstead Theatre in 2010.

David Farr is a writer and director, and has had an extraordinarily prolific career for such a young talent. He was artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London, from 1995 to 1998, moving on to the position of joint artistic director of Bristol Old Vic from 2002 to 2005. He became artistic director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in 2005, where his productions included Water, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Birthday Party, The Magic Carpet, Ramayana, The Odyssey, and a new version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. As a playwright, his work includes The Nativity, Elton John’s Glasses, and Crime and Punishment in Dalston. David joined the RSC as an associate director in 2009, since which time he has directed Greg Hicks as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (2009) and as the title role in King Lear (2010), though his first work with the company came in between his tenures at the Gate and the Old Vic, writing Night of the Soul for the company, which was produced at the Pit Theatre in 2001. He returned to direct an award-winning production of Coriolanus (also starring Greg Hicks) in 2002, and a boldly modernist production of Julius Caesar at the Swan Theatre in 2004, which David revived in his first season at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Lucy Bailey started her directorial career in experimental theater and moved on to work in opera before returning to theater in the mid-1990s. She continued her musical affiliations, however, founding the Gogmagogs in 1995 with violinist Nell Catchpole, known for their exciting hybrid performances combining virtuoso string playing and experimental physical theater. Her breakthrough 1999 production of Tennessee Williams’s Baby Doll in Birmingham found critical acclaim, and transferred to the National and the West End. Other directorial credits include Lady from the Far Sea for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Glass Eels and Comfort Me with Apples for Hampstead Theatre, and Don’t Look Now for the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield and the Lyric Hammersmith. Her first major work with Shakespeare came in 2006 in her production of Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe, followed by productions of Timon of Athens in 2008, and Macbeth in 2010. Her 2009–10 production of Julius Caesar for the RSC marked her directorial debut with the company.

Why is the play called Julius Caesar when he dies halfway through the play?

Hall: I suppose he would have had a lot of trouble on his hands trying to call it Brutus, Cassius, or Antony, because they are all pretty big parts and all three actors would probably want billing! I think because Julius Caesar was the center of that universe and the play is about whether or not the conspirators should topple it. He is a huge figure, and one I think Shakespeare was fascinated by. I think he was fascinated by all the lives of Plutarch, and particularly Julius Caesar. My production started with the triumph and I think that and the title help to show that this man is as close to a king, an emperor, even a god, as somebody could get to within a republic.

You have to remember that the Elizabethan audience did not live in a republic; Shakespeare is writing a play about a completely different political system and in many respects is exploring a theme, which he carried on to explore in Macbeth: the divine right of kings. When is it your duty to stand up and rebel against order and authority? It’s a constant debate of our time. If 300,000 people march in the street against the war in Iraq and Tony Blair ignores them, what else do we do? Shakespeare is exploring that idea but set in a period removed from the one in which he was living to avoid any danger involved in depicting the overthrow of a ruler; famously, the deposition scene was cut from Richard II, and then performed at the Globe on the eve of Essex’s revolt against Elizabeth I. Any stories on stage that depicted a ruler having their authority challenged were very difficult to get past the censor. Julius Caesar gave Shakespeare a great canvas to paint on where he could explore these issues fully. He touched on these themes lightly in Macbeth, where he couldn’t quite be as explicit as I think he wanted to be because he was writing for James I, a monarch who believed absolutely in the divine right of the king. So I think he called this Roman play Julius Caesar to make it absolutely clear that this was the story that he was exploring, and that it had no bearing on his present political or social circumstances: it was to take the heat off.

Farr: The play is fundamentally about what happens when you remove a king, or what happens when you remove a man of power who tries to reach too far, so the shadow of him hangs over the whole political system afterward. Although I suppose Brutus is technically the lead character, he is in no sense in the same way that Hamlet or King Lear is. The play examines the whole political structure and the effect that the death of the king has, so that is probably the reason for the title. For me the play is a wonderful, modern, pertinent examination of the tendency for a leader to try and push just a bit too far, in terms of their status within a society. That could be Elizabeth I or Vladimir Putin or Berlusconi in the modern world; we see it happen again and again and again. I remember when I directed it we discussed a lot the way in which modern leaders pass various laws: immunity from prosecution is a good example, which Putin and Berlusconi both passed, or whether it be certain presidential decrees, like George W. Bush’s creation of a particular department answerable only to him in order that he could bypass certain areas of the Pentagon. There are many wonderful modern examples of what Caesar has done in claiming his crown.

Bailey: It’s clear when you watch the play that the greatest man on that stage is Julius Caesar. Once he has been assassinated it feels as if all the rest are pygmies compared to him. He dominates the first half of the play, as the charismatic, verging on despotic, leader, and after he has been killed he returns to haunt it.