Oliver's twist

If you're the most powerful man in the world and you think life is meaningless, pity the people whose lives you control. Albert Camus' play about the madness of the Roman Emperor Caligula, adapted by Scottish writer David Greig, is "a bit tricky", admits actor Oliver Driver, who plays the lead in the Maidment Theatre production. It opens tonight.

"There's a line in it where he says he feels a violent need for impossible things," he explains. "He decides that rather than trying to find meaning in life in things like love or humanity, Caligula embarks on a mission where everybody else is irrelevant."

And so, Caligula, in a drama which has also been described as very funny, literally asks for the moon. He makes his upper-crust citizens' wives work in the brothels, forces a famine and decides to appoint his horse as a senator. "We all have our little moments when we might go through what Caligula went through, and think that life is meaningless," adds Driver. "We might get a bit grumpy but we don't really affect the rest of the world. But when people in absolute power like Caligula have a bad day, the whole world feels it."