YOU, NERO
YOU, NERO
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Danny Scheie is perhaps the greatest comic actor in North America, without being accused of hyperbole; it would be a safe bet to also include Central America and most of the Galapagos Islands as well.
Personally I give Danny sovereignty over the Western Hemisphere excluding perhaps Nova Scotia.
Danny has ranges of both emotion and vocal pitch that enable him to effect multi-polar mood swings like the weather in Portland; cast as the imperious, impetuous, petulant, irascible Nero, these are an important attributes.
Nero as depicted in Amy Freed's YOU, NERO, currently running at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is the kind of guy who can love you in one instant like Telly Savalas and in the next instant have you as the head liner at Circus Maximus, or the main event at exhibition lion wrestling in the Coliseum or maybe used as a Tiki Torch to light up a ritzy patrician garden party up on the Palatine.
Danny's best performance in the bay area was also Amy Freed's work: RESTORATION COMEDY at California Shakespeare; YOU, NERO is more of Danny doing what he does best: high-energy comedy.
According to Toynbee, the Roman Empire entered a decline after the Second Punic War commencing in 218 b.c.e., Nero hastened that decline, like a pilot trimming nose down following a dual engine flameout.
As the nephew of Caligula, genetically speaking, his DNA did not augur much promise politically; when he ordered the murder of his own mother; it became evident that he put political expediency ahead of family considerations.
Uninformed or informed people believe that the Countrywide Mortgage Company invented the housing crisis; this play illustrates that the first major housing crisis was actually precipitated by Nero.
Historians of his day claim that Nero kept Rome burning for nine days: it took a lot of houses off the market.
Jeff McCarthy as the obsequious, compromising playwright Scribonius is absolutely a howl: while having at least a shred of moral fiber, Jeff's Scribonius instantly tosses it onto the pyre, or into the Venetorium, when offered an evening with Poppaea—played with scintillating, sintering intensity by Susannah Schulman.