This year the company is presenting all four plays again but its ambition is more modest.
Nunn’s attempt to yoke the plays, while thrilling, was often forced, given that they are a far less homogeneous group than Shakespeare’s histories.
So season director Angus Jackson has opted to tell four individual stories, although with considerable cross casting and on Robert Innes Hopkins’s composite set. Indeed, we start in the middle of the sequence with Julius Caesar, which Jackson himself directs.
It is a production which, in some quarters, will be denounced as traditional but it is Jackson’s very concentration on the text that makes it radical.
In an era of rampaging directorial conceit this lucid, beautifully spoken, well-paced production is a tonic.
The story of the conspiracy against Caesar and the subsequent conflict between its prime movers, Brutus and Cassius, and Caesar’s protegé, Mark Antony, is a familiar one but here it is freshly and thrillingly told.
The unusually large crowd of extras not only makes for a splendidly full Capitol but allows for some of the most dynamic fight scenes in years. It is no insult to Andrew Woodall’s powerful performance to say that, for once, the play, far from falling apart after Caesar’s death, gains in power.
James Corrigan gives a passionate and subtle reading of the famous funeral oration and Alex Waldmann’s Brutus, somewhat tentative in his early scenes and his relationship with Portia (Hannah Morrish), comes into his own in his quarrel with Cassius.
Martin Hutson, excellent throughout, is never more impressive than in his battlefield suicide.
His wiry intensity and persuasiveness make him an obvious choice for Iago when the company next tackles Othello.
For all the glamour of its legendary lovers and the glory of its poetry, Antony And Cleopatra is a harder play to carry off than its predecessor.
Iqbal Khan’s production is competent but uninspired and the swift changes of location lack focus, while the audience’s interest frequently sags when the titular couple are off stage.
In spite of Laura Mvula’s atmospheric music, Khan fails to distinguish sufficiently between the worlds of Rome and Egypt. When Octavius Caesar (Ben Allen) berates the sensuality of Egypt, it makes no sense to have him first seen luxuriating in a steam bath. Khan’s approach, like Jackson’s, lays great emphasis on his actors and, Allen apart, the principals fail to justify it.
Antony Byrne is effectively grizzled as the middle-aged Antony but he is more of a sergeant major than a general.
And Andrew Woodall’s Enobarbus swallows the poetry in his celebrated description of Cleopatra.
It is hard for any actress to live up to that description but Josette Simon barely seems to try.
Her Cleopatra is all affection. Her vocal mannerisms grow increasingly wearing.
She has neither “infinite variety” nor emotional consistency.
JULIUS CAESAR: 4/5
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA: 2/5
Royal Shakespeare Company Stratford upon Avon (Tickets: 01789 403493/rsc.org.uk; £10-£70)
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