Petty Men at Arcola Theatre
Shakespeare goes meta in Arcola Theatre’s Petty Men, an inventive adaptation that sees ancient Rome fused with a London playhouse. Co-created by leads Adam Goodbody and John Chisham, along with director Julia Levai, this genre-bending take on Julius Caesar is a never-boring blend of theatrical elements, from classic Shakespearean dialogue to mixed-media artistry and elaborate prop work. It’s as original and compelling as it is discombobulating.
Petty Men offers a play within a play, with Goodbody and Chisham’s unnamed characters understudying for Cassius and Brutus in the 100th performance of a modern run of Julius Caesar. They’re a classic odd couple: Understudy Cassius is a disciplined thespian, forever rehearsing his lines, while Understudy Brutus is the more relaxed and lackadaisical of the pair. What unites them is a love for their craft and an underlying bitterness that others get to tread the boards while they languish backstage. To amuse themselves, they stage their own version of the play in the dressing room. But as they delve into the rich source material, the themes of brotherhood and betrayal hit a little close to home, and the events of the plot bleed out beyond the pages of the script.
Levai, Goodbody and Chisham have engineered a clever concept that offers an interesting take on the text: the aspirations of the overlooked understudies are an apt parallel for the bloody ambitions of Shakespeare’s conspirators. The blending of the two storylines is well done; the strongest scenes are the ones in which Shakespeare’s beautiful language is enmeshed and interspersed with modern speech. The high drama of the original play is effectively brought to life again in the newer story, and Petty Men is always compelling. Goodbody and Chisham are strong performers, and they have an impressive chemistry together that the performance wouldn’t work without.
But the deliberate messiness of the core concept – the ever-blurrier lines between the characters’ reality and the play they are performing – makes the story feel, at times, downright confusing. There are a lot of different production elements thrown into the mix – music breaks, fake blood, text animations on the closed-captioning screen – but they’re hit-and-miss, with only some substantively adding to the story. There’s a sense that we’re not really supposed to focus on this too much, that there’s been a conscious choice to sacrifice conventional narrative structure for tone and atmosphere. It’s certainly entertaining, but it’s not always easy to follow.
Petty Men deserves accolades for originality and for offering a genuinely interesting new storytelling approach to a classic text. It’s well-directed, well-acted and very watchable. It’s just a bit messy around the edges.
Maggie O’Shea
Photos: Olivia Spencer
Petty Men is at Arcola Theatre from 19th November until 20th December 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.
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