Acclaimed British actress Suzanne Bertish (HBO's "Rome," Broadway's Nicholas Nickleby, and multiple productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company) will play Cleopatra.

Julius Caesar will be played by Dan Kremer, a regular at the Oregon and Utah Shakespeare festivals.

Additional casting will be announced. The productions will play The Shakespeare Theatre's new Harman Hall, in repertory, April 26-July 6.

Artistic director Michael Kahn directs Antony and Cleopatra, which begins April 26. David Muse directs Julius Caesar, which begins April 27. Associate artistic director Muse makes his mainstage directing debut.

According to The Shakespeare Theatre, "Featuring some of the most sublime poetry of love and loss ever written, Antony and Cleopatra is a dark, intimate portrait of an ill-fated love affair. The play begins two years after the events of Julius Caesar, with civil unrest roiling imperial Rome. The aging Marc Antony, one of the empire's three rulers, lives a decadent life in Egypt, carousing with Queen Cleopatra. As Rome reasserts its claim on him, Antony struggles between his sense of duty to his country and his consuming love for Cleopatra." Julius Caesar, billed by the company as "swift and enthralling as a political thriller," focuses on "the life-and-death struggle for power in Rome. Fearing that Caesar's growing strength and constitutional ambitions threaten the Republic, a faction of politicians plots to assassinate him. But when Caesar is killed, chaos engulfs Rome. Alive with stunning rhetoric, Julius Caesar investigates the intoxicating effects of power and the dangers of idealism. In Caesar, Brutus and the young Marc Antony, Shakespeare created three fascinating, dynamic characters."

Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall is located at 610 F Street NW, Washington, DC.

For more information visit www.shakespearetheatre.org.

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Shakespeare Theatre Company's current production is George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, through March 23.