Sometimes the parallels that are brought in can make the play seem less relevant; you can deny a play's application to the universal by making it too specific. Sometimes having a modern context does make things easier to grasp; sometimes, you go, "Why have they got swords?" "Why didn't Juliet just text Romeo? Why did she bother posting a letter? Why was the Milan post service so bad?" It throws up irrelevant questions that don't help.

At the assassination of Caesar when Cassius says, "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!" And you kind of went, "Never was there a truer word spoken."

I guess, is we are not saying, "Look, William Shakespeare's written a critique of modern Africa." What we're saying is that we've shifted the metaphor to make it more immediate.

I always feel emotionally engaged in productions. If I ever get to the point where I don't feel emotionally engaged, maybe I should stop. You have to make each play an event. Whether that's star leading actors or the concept behind the production.

Really what Brutus and Cassius do by assassinating Caesar, is open up a vacuum into which much more ruthless people run. Julius Caesar is an amazingly contemporary, resonant, politically astute play.

I think William Shakespeare's like a passport through your life: as a kid hearing about a play with fairies or witches or ghosts, you get excited by that possibility. Then later on you become interested in the psychology or the politics or the beauty of the language. You grow up with the plays. King Lear is one that I don't feel grown up enough to do yet.

I have seen productions of Julius Caesar that set it in a modern, Western context and it just looks as though they're getting rid of a particularly cantankerous chairman of the board rather than the great leader of the world.