"Caligula" casting at Donmar Warehouse 2003

Further casting has been announced for Caligula, which opens at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre on 30 Apr 03, following previews from 24 Apr 03, and booking to 14 Jun 03.

Written by Albert Camus, in a new translation by David Greig, the cast includes Michael Sheen (Caligula), Raymond Coulthard (Cherea), Jason Hughes (Helicon), Diana Kent ( Caesonia ), Ben Turner (Scipio), Jeff Diamond (Mucius), Bernard Gallagher (Cassius), Olivia Macdonald (Mucius's wife), Jerome Willis (Octavius )

It is directed by Michael Grandage, designed by Christoher Oram, with lighting by Neil Austin.

In this darkly comic drama, a charismatic leader is given absolute freedom to challenge social convention in pursuit of personal obsession. Following the death of his beloved sister, Emperor Caligula (Michael Sheen) deserts the Roman Assembly for three days and three nights. He returns with a single objective: to understand the meaning of life. In an environment of mounting hysteria, those who surround him look on in horror as the empire flounders and Caligula's megalomania reaches its inevitable bloody climax.

As a pioneer of the French Existentialist movement and a campaigner for social change, Albert Camus wrote Caligula in 1944 and reworked it throughout his lifetime. The story of Caligula has spanned a range of modern interpretations from Bob Guccione's 1979 Penthouse film, to Robert Graves' novel and the seminal BBC series, I Claudius.