Any definition of a classic must include the quality of timelessness, having as much relevance today as it may have had centuries ago. Camus' Caligula, in this wonderful new translation by David Grieg and an exceptional production directed by Michael Grandage, most definitely fits the bill. The simple set, a golden shimmering back wall and a square pool of water; the costumes, reminiscent of, but not quite completely, Roman; and the music, threatening at times, vaudevillian on occasion, work brilliantly together to create an existentialist world that is simply breathtaking. 
      Michael Sheen's eponymous emperor is one of the best performances I have ever seen. Of course Caligula is a fantastic character and one can't help remembering John Hurt's amazing portrayal in I Claudius, but Michael Sheen and Camus bring so many other sides to the immoral and terror-inducing emperor. He first appears after the death of Drusilla, his incestuously beloved sister. There is ominous apprehension from the patricians which is gruesomely fulfilled beyond their wildest nightmares. But there is also a little lost boy, a young man fighting to make sense of the world, and then a man who uses power to achieve the impossible. And yet he still can't have the one thing he insists he wants - the moon. 
      His logic is undeniable – 'all governments steal, mine just does it openly.' And much later on, after randomly murdering sons, fathers and his own senate members – 'do you know how many wars I have turned down? – I have killed fewer than the most inconsequential war.' He commits the most vile atrocities and yet, like Scipio, whose father he has killed, you begin, if not quite to sympathise with him, to understand the reasons for his behaviour. 
      Sheen is undoubtedly the star but he wouldn't shine so brightly without the splendid cast surrounding him. Ben Turner is wonderfully passionate and vulnerable as Scipio and Diana Kent impressive as Caesonia, in love with Caligula and obviously hedging her bets by aiding him in his capricious schemes. Every character has his moment and each is beautifully observed. 
      The production is visually stunning as well, Caligula at times almost melting into the wall behind him, and at one point fishing out of the pool an enormous mirror and dancing around with it, gazing at his own reflection in a totally hypnotic sequence. There are also moments of great hilarity, when Caligula declares himself a god – or rather, goddess: Venus, in fact - and parades in front of his senators in gold bikini, batting his gold eyelashes, or when he oversees a poetry competition, blowing his whistle as each poem fails to meet his requirements. 
      Throughout you are so aware of his despair, his contempt, for himself as well as others, that you cannot fail to feel for him. He is almost begging to be assassinated and when the senators finally get the courage to attack him, in the last seconds of the play, they manage to fail. This is a Caligula pleading to be released from the hell he has created for himself.
Francine Brody