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It’s a bit of a risk to put a lesser-known Shakespeare play with a vaguely comical name in the National Theatre’s massive Olivier space. But you wouldn’t know it from the monumental confidence of Lyndsey Turner’s swaggering production, full of antique grandeur and up-to-the-minute fireworks. The story’s set in the early days of Ancient Rome – the city’s fierce origin myth referenced by a giant statue of the wolf who suckled its twin founders. But Turner’s aesthetic is refined rather than feral, gesturing towards the remote elite that stifled Rome until it declined and fell.
