Emperor and Galilean
From: Thursday, 9th June 2011
To: Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Our Review: 
Your Reviews:
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Synopsis
Live like Constantius, under Christ’s terror and judgement, or rule a land of light! Emperor, or Galilean, that’s your choice. Charting the true odyssey of an astonishing man, Julian, as he struggles to find spiritual fulfilment and political pre-eminence, Ibsen’s lost masterpiece sweeps across Greece and the Middle-East from AD 351 covering 12 crucial years in the history of civilisation. Oh Dionysus, pour your glory into the minds of men and fill their souls with rapture until rejoicing pours forth in dance and song! Life! Life! Made Emperor, Julian attempts to abolish Christianity and restore the old gods. But met with fierce resistance, this great free-thinker become s a tyrant more hated than his brutal predecessor Constantius. And in arousing the Christians from their apathy he advances their cause, his life and death altering the course of history in stark opposition to his intent. All I wanted was to return mankind to an age of joy. But maybe I’m living in the wrong time. Ibsen’s magnificent farewell to epic drama tackles faith head on. A cast of 50 perform this exciting new version, creating a cathedral of sound and ritual.
Our Review:
16 June 2011
Playwright Ben Power has demonstrated, notably in his reworking of Faust and Paradise Lost, the sort of intellectual rigour that gives the brain cells a bracing workout in the theatre. He’s conflated Ibsen’s meditation on the battle for souls - and bodies - between Christianity and Paganism, between free will and determinism, into three-and-a-half manageable hours. And he’s found his soul-mates in director Jonathan Kent and designer Paul Brown.
The story centres on Julian, the Byzantine Emperor called Julian the Apostate, because he made it his mission to reinstate the old gods in the fourth-century Christian Byzantine Empire. The play’s huge canvas follows him across Asia and Europe, from his teenage years, living precariously in Christian Constantinople where his Uncle Constantius (magnificently paranoiac and sardonic Nabil Shaban) rules by fear, to his own brief (361-363 AD) and according to Ibsen, bloody reign.
History m...
Latest User Review
JEAN RAMM - 11 August 2011:
I did this yesterday re my visit to NT on 9 August. Why has my comment not gone on line?...
Cast
Andrew Scott (Emperor Julian the Apostate)
Ian McDiarmid (Maximus)
James McArdle
Jamie Ballard
John Heffernan)
Genevieve O'Reilly
Prasanna
Simon Coombs
Chris Jared
Simon Merrells
Carole Nimmons
Lara Rossi
Creative
Henrik Ibsen (Author)
National Theatre (Producer)
Ben Power (Adaptation)
Jonathan Kent (Director)
Paul Brown (Design)
Mark Henderson (Lighting)
Jonathan Dove (Music)
Nina Dunn (video) (Design)
Denni Sayers (movement) (Director)
Christopher Shutt (Sound)
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