Recent events in Westminster should make this a particularly apt time for a run-out for this drama of political machinations and whisperings in the corridors of power.

Indeed, it would come as no surprise to learn that Brutus and Cassius bought their swanky-looking togas on expenses. After all the blood and dirt of Lucy Bailey’s frenzied production, we should probably keep an eye out for their dry-cleaning bills, too.

The RSC’s rosters aren’t exactly over-endowed with female directors, so it’s good to see the reliable Bailey make her Stratford debut. It’s a bells-and-whistles effort that’s doing all it possibly can to get noticed, with screaming and portents and moody sound and lighting effects.

Nevertheless, all the clever video projections in the world can’t hide the fact that curriculum-staple Caesar is a sub-par play of two bewilderingly different halves. Next time the RSC feels the need for a touch of the ancients, please may we have Troilus and Cressida instead?
Although John Mackay struggles as a nondescript Cassius, the talented Sam Troughton is a pleasingly broody, if occasionally vocally underpowered Brutus.

Even so, the pair of them make their reasoning so internalised that we feel oddly uninvolved in the assassination conspiracy, whose object is Greg Hicks’s jokey, capricious and decidedly unthreatening JC.

Thus the action doesn’t become the hurtling political thriller that it should and if, in Caesar, you’re not gripped by the first three acts, you might as well leave at the interval, as four and five come nowhere near the febrile atmosphere of their predecessors. Nifty deployment of movable video screens by designer William Dudley means constant images of a baying, swaying mob, ready to be won over by rabble‑rousing oratory. Bailey’s thesis is that Rome, founded in violence as Romulus fought Remus (and we get some bloody pre-show wrestling as illustration) is a superstitious, combustible place.

Looking at the candidates on offer here, we wouldn’t trust the running of the empire to Brutus, Cassius or Mark Antony (Darrell D’Silva).
I’m not sure, though, that our uppermost thought on exiting a production of Caesar should be that Octavius is the best long-term bet.

In rep until 2 October. Information: 0844 800 1110, www.rsc.org.uk.