Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre)

In this context do you know what's meant by 'promenade' theatre? I'm imagining something somewhat interactive like Punchdrunk, where audiences walk around and the boundary between stage and 'seating' is essentially blurred, but then I'm unclear why something like that would need to be shown in a theatre, rather than any other building. Or is something like the van Hove Roman Tragedies also considers promenade, where there's seating but also some (more controlled) moving around within the theatre space?

The first three productions - on sale now

We're thrilled to announce that The Bridge will open in October with a new comedy, Young Marx, by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, directed by Nicholas Hytner with Rory Kinnear in the title role. This is followed in January by Julius Caesar, staged in promenade by Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus, David Morrissey as Mark Antony, Michelle Fairley as Cassius and David Calder as Caesar. Then in April comes a new play, Nightfall, by rising playwright and novelist Barney Norris, directed by Laurie Sansom. See below for some more information.

Future productions at The Bridge

From summer 2018, productions will include a new play by Lucinda Coxon based on the novel Alys, Always by Harriet Lane; a new play by Nina Raine about JS Bach, played by Simon Russell Beale; flatpack, a new play by John Hodge; The Black Cloud, a new play by Sam Holcroft from the novel by Fred Hoyle; and Carmen Havana, a version of Bizet’s opera by Lucy Prebble with choreography by Miguel Altunaga and directed by Nicholas Hytner.

Some pretty impressive stuff in there, I have to say.

In the promo shot, poor Ben Whishaw looks like he's just staggered out of Police Academy's Blue Oyster Bar.

A nice little clip here on the set-up of the theatre, also spends a couple of seconds demonstrating set-up for Julius Caesar.

Full professional cast announced!

Any audience participation if you're standing and being the mob?

Ah, that's good to know - I'm standing and I hoped it wouldn't be too interactive...!

Looking forward to a return visit to the Bridge.

What is the pit situation like? Is visibility generally good, are some areas better than others, do you get moved around a lot, how crowded is it?

So as it was the dress run I think there were far fewer people in the pit than their usually would be, so it worked really well in that respect as that's lost of free space to move around and get a better sightline - so my visibility was excellent most of the time as a result of this and I could quite often easily get right up close to the actors. I assume they're going to want to be filling it a lot more for the actual performances so not sure if that will make a difference, but the main part of each scene is on a high raised stage which come out from the ground at the lots of different  so I imagine you'll be able to see well even if there's more people and your a bit further back? There's quite a bit of moving - I think there were maybe about 4 different stages around the pit where the main action happened but often stuff going on outside of that as well, the stage management team had to frantically move people out of the way at several points when people were standing in the way of upcoming scenes but I assume they'll tighten that up a bit as they have more performances and work out the best ways to get people in the right places.

I think it came to about 2 hours overall without an interval, they had cut out A LOT from the original text and I actually felt like it went by pretty quickly although I was quite uncomfortable by the end. I think it was definitely worth the lack of comfort for the experience being in the pit gives you, and I'm glad they didn't have an interval as it would have totally ruined the whole experience - it's definitely not for everyone though so I think you have to be prepared for what you're getting yourself into before buying a standing ticket.

If anyone's interested in what Hytner has to say about the seats, in his own words: "Prominent critics should be all be in A 6-19, B 6-18 or in A or B 56-69. Under no circs use AA or B.B. tickets for important critics.”

Use this information as you will.

Ben Whishaw was discussing this on Grahan Norton’s R2 show today. Didn’t give a lot away though.

I suppose we could have a stab (!) at guessing and see if s/he has posted a review online?