This was my first visit to the great Stratford Bardathon. Anticipation was slightly tinged with apprehension at what might await. The season so far has had mixed fortunes with the exception of the universally acclaimed Antony and Cleopatra. Now we were to meet two of its protagonists, Antony and Octavius, in an earlier age and encounter, their destinies marked but not yet crossing. While it would be absurd to think of a pre-quel' it remains fascinating to see Shakespeare's consistency of thought in these power-struggles, and of course the overarching presence of North's Plutarch, his sourcebook.

Director Sean Holmes opts for a Roman production, with musicians playing a variety of exotic instruments, and songs sung in Latin. Designer Stephen Brimson Lewis offers a dead black backdrop, a dead white stage (blood to be added) and a long ramp through the auditorium for racing exits and entrances. Fights (lots of those) are by the unequalled Terry King. Choreography, grouping, special effects of rain and storm (which Shakespeare's own normally scanty stage directions stress in some detail) are inventive and exciting.

So all the externals are there. What will the human actors make of this strong, masculine play with no central dominant character, no tragic hero, and little of the pity and fear' traditionally evoked? Can we empathise with Brutus, who articulates the perplexity of wrongdoing for the greater good, the strife between personal affections and reasons of state but whose sense of his own integrity verges on the smug, and whose judgment of men and affairs is disastrously and unarguably wrong?

John Light struggles with the role, at his best in the self-questioning orchard scene, and the domestic interludes with his servant Lucius. His voice isn't always even, too hectoring in the quarrel with Cassius where he is in any case at his most hypocritical and most easily loses the hearer's attention. Finbar Lynch's youthful Cassius,eager, fluent and lithe, seems less Machiavellian and dangerous than his reputation. bearing Brutus's constant contradictions of his strategies perhaps too patiently.

James Hayes' Caesar is excellent (and always clear) and contrives to be at his most intolerable just before his murder; he dies long and hard, wounding several of his attackers, a soldier to the last. Immediately the focus of the play switches, with the entrance of Antony and the transfer of initiative. Antony (Ariyon Bakare), on crutches with a foot injury, used his fine voice skilfully to win round first the conspirators and then the people of Rome.

The device of having Caesar literally rise from the dead and wander through the rest of the play wasn't a good plan and the final battle scenes notoriously diffuse aren't helped by having both armies in similar attire. Incidentally, for the squeamish, there's a lot of blood and some clever graphic stabbings.

Much more important is to notice how Octavius (Nick Court in his debut season), cool, smiling, imperturbable, already overrules Antony. The last lines and disturbing final tableau see them confront each other. In ten years' time they would do so again. At Actium.

The production can be seen in repertory into October.