The musical Nero, now playing at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, has been criticised as an incoherent and dated attempt to blend Greek tragedy pastiche with satire on Donald Trump. The production carries content warnings for “blood, incest, nudity and violence”, to which the review adds incoherence, arch and wooden acting, and a harp-centric score that riffles through musical genres but mostly consists of half-completed themes.
A 23-year development
The show is the work of Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and the late Duncan Sheik (music), the duo behind Spring Awakening. It has been in development for 23 years, beginning as a play about George W Bush’s Iraq War before apparently mutating into a haphazard musical satire on the Trumpian cult of personality in 2022, when director Lindsay Posner and South Korean production company Seensee came on board. It is now fully staged, two months after Sheik’s death at 56, and already looks dated in the light of the US midterms.
Writing in the programme, producer Park Myung-Sung still hopes Nero will eventually become “the musical we have always envisioned”.
Fine songs amid a vague score
There are one or two fine songs: the slinky cabaret number Bosom of the Moon, delivered by Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky as Nero’s lover Poppeia, and the bittersweet, transgressive duet The Lover From Hell by Andrew Barth Feldman’s Nero and Sally Dexter as his manipulative mum Agrippina. But much of the score feels unrooted and vague, and the lyrics are often painfully effortful.
The production pastiches Greek tragedy, complete with a singing chorus. Nero’s mentor Seneca, played by Stephen Carlile, sings the samba-style Quelle Surprise, opening and shutting dispatch-box briefcases fitted out with tongues and teeth. Feldman’s Nero is a glitter-spangled bisexual man-baby who would rather be in showbiz than in charge, making his first diva-ish entrance with his name in lights on the gantry above the stage.
Obvious asides and wasted potential
Scenes shuffle randomly and hurriedly forward, with songs dropped in any old how. There are thuddingly obvious asides (“Make Rome Great Again!”) and absurdly pointed lyrics (“better hang on each word that he Tweets,” Seneca warbles, before repeating emphatically, “TWEEEETS!”). At one point two characters throw up purely so Nero can shout “use the f***ing vomitorium” at them, deliberately misusing the term.
Amid the five-strong band, wearing t-shirts bearing the names of classical Greek writers, harpist Catrin Meek (“Sappho”) stands out. The sound design is poor. Some serious money has been spent on the costumes and a cast that includes rising Broadway star Feldman and stage and screen favourite Dexter, but Posner’s direction is described as imperceptible. The production runs to 5 Dec at southwarkplayhouse.co.uk.
