.Crazy Love

Imaginative reinterpretations of Roman history and Shakespeare.

Every tyrant has his eccentricities, but it’s been alleged that
Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was crazier than
most. Historical accounts paint Nero as a loutish, potbellied man with
extravagant tastes, known for killing indiscriminately just to ensure
his own claim to power. Even as a 2,000-year-old historical figure, he
makes a terrific muse. Playwright Amy Freed proves as much in her new
comedy You, Nero, now playing at Berkeley Repertory Theater.
It’s a joyous satire of a sadistic regime, told from the point of view
of Scribonius (Jeff McCarthy), a has-been dramaturge who gets hired to
write the emperor’s biopic. With this setup, Freed takes an absolutely
harrowing story (that of an emperor who killed his mother, wife,
adoptive brother, and step-father, and partied down in his palace while
the rest of Rome crumbled), and makes it funny.

Besides having a storyline with built-in complications, You,
Nero
succeeds on the power of its title character. Actor Danny
Scheie is nothing short of brilliant as the profligate ruler. We hear
about him from other characters before we see him, and the gossip keeps
escalating: First, Nero bans tragedy from Rome, then he mounts a
self-aggrandizing arts festival (“Neronica”) and erects a Ministry of
Taste on the site of a former orphanage. His palace, with its tiled
floors and Ionic columns, is made into a kind of Roman Emerald City.
Thus, Nero might produce a bit of cognitive dissonance when he finally
surfaces: Short, paunchy, effeminate, plagued by an Oedipal complex,
temperamental (he kills a slave for breathing the wrong way),
enthusiastic but hugely inept (he has to enlist Scribonius to write his
own panegyric), and, above all, decadent. Like a bitchy teenage girl,
he’s someone with a lot of spiteful behaviors who nonetheless endears
himself to his audience. Freed deserves a lot of credit for taking the
real Nero and amplifying all his character traits, but it’s Scheie’s
interpretation that really brings the script to life.

The characters who surround Nero are all crazy too, though none of
them have quite the same magnetism. Scribonius is the play’s Woody
Allen, though McCarthy makes him a little more square than he has to
be. Nero’s mother Agrippina (Lori Larsen) looks like a consummate
cougar, though even she couldn’t hold a candle to Nero’s mistress
Poppaea, played with just the right mix of coquettishness and
naiveté by actress Susannah Shulman. With so many slapstick
characters and such self-consciously clever writing, it’s no surprise
that You, Nero devolves into camp around the middle of the
second act. But there’s definitely a payoff at the end.

As for taking liberties with source material, You, Nero isn’t
the only game in town. California Shakespeare Theater kicks off its
summer season with an imaginative interpretation of Romeo and
Juliet
, directed by Jonathan Moscone. This production stays true to
the original script, which makes it a lot longer and heavier than most
versions. But Moscone had the insight to use contemporary sets and
costumes: Teenagers skulk around the stage listening to iPods, and the
backdrop is a splashy graffiti wall. Romeo and Juliet opens with
a gang fight between the Montagues and Capulets, during which one
member swoops in on a skateboard, while another takes cell phone
pictures of the carnage. Fast-paced and brutal, this scene sets the
tenor for a play that’s as much about violence as it is about
romance.

Aside from juxtaposing Shakespeare’s unadulterated script with
modern aesthetic elements, Moscone brings a rather unusual cast to this
production. Red-haired Sarah Nealis makes Juliet giddier and a little
brattier than the script might normally call for, though she’s also
quite convincing as a fourteen-year-old girl. Alex Morf’s Romeo is a
sensitive brooder and kind of a sissy, while Liam Vincent is downright
slimy as rival suitor Paris. But the real stars here are Dan Hiatt, who
plays Friar Lawrence as kind of a washed-up hippie or cannabis club
owner; Catherine Castellanos, whose sassy, no-nonsense Nurse defies
expectations; and, above all, Jud Williford, who steals the show as
Mercutio. These actors give the play more depth by making the character
relationships seem real.

It’s a combination of great casting and deft stage direction that
allow Moscone to wring all the dramatic tension out of this play. Early
on, he establishes a fraught relationship between Mercutio and Romeo,
which falls somewhere between homoeroticism and brotherly love —
and justifies Romeo’s rash decision to slay his mistress’ cousin
Tybalt, to avenge Mercutio’s death. Nealis’ doe eyes and puerile
expressions make her a sympathetic Juliet, and Hiatt’s Friar Lawrence
seems like the kind of well-intentioned guy who would muck things up,
then try to rationalize everyone’s death in the end. Ironically, the
only thing wanting in this production is a little more chemistry
between Romeo and Juliet. Their balcony scene pales in comparison to
the subsequent brawl between Tybalt, Romeo, and Mercutio, which ends
with Romeo bludgeoning Tybalt in a carnal rage. Taken in context, it’s
the play’s real love scene.

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