It was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from 16 November 2017 to 10 February 2018, directed by Gregory Doran and with Richard McCabe as Cicero.
[2] The cycle consists of six plays, each roughly one hour long, performed in two groups of three, all narrated by Cicero's slave and later freedman Tiro.
The second group adapts the remainder of Dictator into three plays entitled Caesar, Mark Anthony and Octavian.
The rest of the three plays then follows Cicero's reaction to the Ides of March and his failed attempts to save the Roman Republic by playing Mark Anthony and Octavian off against each other, culminating in Cicero's execution in 43 BC.
The final play ends with an epilogue by Tiro, covering the later fates of Brutus, Cassius, Octavian and Mark Anthony and imagining Cicero's afterlife in words from his own Dream of Scipio.