Four actors, one candlelit room and Shakespeare’s most political tragedy: Julius Caesar opens the Globe’s winter season with Kate Duchêne in the title role. Here is everything you need to know before you book.
The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse has been open on Bankside since 2014, and in all that time it has never staged Julius Caesar. That changes on Friday 6 November 2026, when Shakespeare’s Globe opens its winter season in the candlelit indoor theatre with a new production of the Roman tragedy, adapted and directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins for a company of only four actors.
Who is starring in Julius Caesar?
Kate Duchêne takes the title role, and doubles as the Soothsayer who warns of the Ides of March and as Octavius Caesar, the heir who emerges from the war that follows. Caoilfhionn Dunne plays Brutus, Natey Jones is Cassius and Adam Gillen is Mark Antony.
That is the entire company. Duchêne comes back to the Globe after Henry VIII, and Gillen is another familiar face on Bankside, whose Globe credits include I, Joan, Henry VIII and Romeo and Juliet. Dunne’s stage credits include A Small and Quiet Light at the Orange Tree Theatre and Chichester’s Minerva Theatre, and The Crucible at The Yard Theatre. Jones has worked with the RSC and Hampstead Theatre on Titus Andronicus and at the National Theatre in The Grapes of Wrath, and counts Pressure at Brixton House and The Harder They Come at Stratford East among other credits.
What is Julius Caesar about?
The setting is Rome at a moment of political alarm. A group of senators, uneasy at how much power Caesar has gathered into his own hands, resolves to remove him, and Cassius sets about persuading Brutus, the most respected man among them, to lend the plot his name. The killing comes at the midpoint rather than the climax. What follows is the more searching half of the play: the crowd turns against the conspirators, and the contest over who should govern Rome becomes a civil war.
The Globe presents the production as a story of friendship, betrayal and political violence, and casts the audience as the citizens of Rome, the crowd whose favour every speaker on stage is trying to win. With four performers sharing every part, the doubling is part of the design rather than a limitation on it.
Who is behind the production?
Joe Hill-Gibbins has worked in this room before, directing Ghosts there, and spent several years at the Young Vic, latterly as its deputy artistic director. “Reviving a classic play in front of a contemporary audience creates a kind of time machine, which allows us to pull the past into the present and for our present to inhabit the past,” said Hill-Gibbins of the production.
The design is by Rosanna Vize, with candlelight design by Charles Balfour. The score comes from Louise Anna Duggan and Zands Duggan, the percussion partnership known as Minihi. Joana Nastari is movement and intimacy director, Annemette Verspeak is voice and text coach, and Lucy Wray is associate director and dramaturg. Casting is by Becky Paris CDG, with Alice Walters as casting associate. The production is Shakespeare’s Globe’s own.
When and where can I see it?
Performances begin on Friday 6 November 2026 at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the Globe’s galleried indoor theatre on Bankside, with press night on Tuesday 17 November 2026. The run continues until Sunday 14 February 2027. A running time has not yet been confirmed. The production contains depictions of war, suicide and violence, and under-16s must be accompanied by an adult.
Tickets currently start at £8, and our report on the full company announcement has more on the casting. Julius Caesar is booking now.
What else should I book if I like it?
The Animals Come to the Table follows in the same candlelit room: a world premiere from Timberlake Wertenbaker, written for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
The Seagull continues the indoor season in the new year, reuniting Caroline Steinbeis and Rory Mullarkey, the pairing behind Three Sisters, on Chekhov’s play of ambition and vanity.
King John, directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart, is the natural companion piece: another Shakespeare history of a contested crown, and one of his least performed.
Hamlet Hail to the Thief at the Barbican Theatre offers a second Shakespeare tragedy of a rotten state this winter; our guide to that production has the details.
