“The results are eighty percent thrilling and twenty percent frustrating. The thrills start early, with a trompe l’oeil whose nature it would be heartless to reveal…
The production does more exciting things with the hero’s environment than with the man himself. He doesn’t seem to be much for hanging around in bars, but for the other Romans, places of refreshment are their natural habitat. “Anger’s my meat” says Volumnia, after her son’s exile, and the production takes the hint by having her say it in a restaurant, a fashionable one where the newly triumphant tribunes have gone to celebrate.”