This is no glamorous dressing room: no telegrams, fizz or floral tributes. Instead, there’s an ailing pot plant and a bucket to catch the drips. It’s the understudies’ lair in a West End production of Julius Caesar. Some big name plays Caesar (consensus is he’s a bit of a dick), while our guys cover the chief assassins. They don’t even get their own names here – just Understudy Brutus and Understudy Cassius.
Night after night they skulk, waiting for the call that never comes, the show Tannoy an implacable reminder of the parade passing them by. For the show’s 100th performance, they celebrate with party hats, microwave popcorn and a run-through of the play they may never deliver for real.
