PRINCIPAL CAST: Nigel Cooke (Octavius Caesar); Lesley Duff (Calphurnia); Emrys James (Cassius); Gemma Jones (Portia); Peter McEnery (Brutus); Joseph O'Conor (Julius Caesar); David Schofield (Mark Antony).

The first performance of this production took place on 24 March 1983.

"Something of a heavy start to this year's Stratford season, with one of Shakespeare's austerest plays given a slow and carelessly-cast production by Ron Daniels which never finds its focus....The show's designs are its greatest success. Farrah's Rome is an ugly place, blocks of masonry and steps faced with what looks like marble-veined kitchen Formica repeated in a zebra-crossing pattern on the floor, but his black setting for the battle scenes is really impressive, with a furry carpet stagecloth, heavily worn in places like a well-used beaver coat, that felicitously suggests rough fighting ground of mud and trenches. And Ann Curtis's costumes are a remarkably clever, stylist exercise in inventing a historical period rather than reproducing any particular one." ~ Anthony Masters, "A play in search of focus", The Times, 31 March 1983

"Mr McEnery has the hardest role in the play, but he is helped by one circumstance; he is allowed to be nice to his sleepy servant Lucius (Cyril Nri). ~ James Fenton, "Why Cassius wins the laurel wreath", Sunday Times, 3 April 1983