'Nero' review — the formidably cruel Roman Emperor becomes a musical star

Read our review of Nero, led by Andrew Barth Feldman, now in performances at Southwark Playhouse to 5 December.

Summary

• Musical Nero comes to Southwark Playhouse
• The show is by Steven Sater and the late Duncan Sheik
• Andrew Barth Feldman is a riveting Roman Emperor
• There's good support from Stephen Carlile and Sally Dexter

Twenty-three years in creation haven’t made a satisfying entity of Nero, a self-proclaimed “new musical” that has had an intriguing, often unexpected journey en route to this London showing. Extensively workshopped and revised over the years, the current iteration saw the tragic loss of its Tony-winning composer Duncan Sheik, who died age 56 in September.

Sheik’s passing has coincided with an uptick of interest in his work. The maverick talent’s career-making Spring Awakening launches a major revival at the end of this month Off Broadway, where a separate show, Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, is currently playing. Small wonder the opening night performance of Nero was preceded by a moving tribute spoken from the stage by Steven Sater, Sheik’s Tony-winning book writer and lyricist on Spring Awakening who serves in the same capacity here. The difference is that Nero, for all its best intentions, really isn’t ready for prime time, whereas Spring Awakening even at first viewing seemed an instant classic.

You can see the appeal just now of the formidably cruel Roman Emperor of the title. One doesn’t have to search widely to find a contemporary equivalent to a public figure marked out by sexual depredation, deranged vanity, and a fondness for “golden toys”, to use the language of the show. Its producer Park Myung-Sung, of Korea’s Seensee Company, would surely locate separate affinities north of his divided country’s border: cruelty, it seems, is restricted by neither place nor time.

What’s needed, though, is some governing vision that might shape afresh for the stage a period of misrule more often depicted on screen. A tireless Andrew Barth Feldman works furiously to make sense of a character caparisoned in glitter and female underwear one minute, capable of murderous atrocity the next. But this latest alumnus of Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen to hit the London stage must contend with clotted exposition ("shall" gets spoken a lot) that sits uneasily alongside gobs of facetiousness. You wince at remarks like “Rome will be great again” – get the parallels? – while half the time wondering whether this apparent rock star-in-waiting might prefer emceeing a club night up the road in Vauxhall to presiding over an incest-rich empire that is all too ripe for burning.

The creative team is headed by director Lindsay Posner, on a roll recently following Equus and the summer’s surprise commercial hit The Truth, here marking a rare foray into musicals. Likewise the vaunted choreographer James Cousins worked on Equus while helping keep the glorious Guys and Dolls in giddy form across almost two years at the Bridge. But neither they nor Sater’s book seem to have alighted on a style or tone to compel attention across two and a half hours in which the ensemble lopes this way and that on a largely bare stage adorned by the word "Nero" showily spelled out atop Georgia Lowe’s set. The visual implication is a musical about the theatricality of cruelty – and why not: look at Sweeney Todd by way of comparison – whose heart lies in camp pastiche that cedes ground all too often to a self-serious slog through a depraved past.

Sheik’s score reminds us of a talent taken far too soon, and many a number put me in mind of the roiling fury mixed with the richly wistful earworms of Spring Awakening. (The expletives on offer here will surprise no one who recalls the previous show.) The 11 o’clock number “And Now He Hounds the Night” would appear to be this musical’s standard-bearer, not least as sinuously delivered by the elfin leading Feldman, who is cheekily boyish one minute, bossy and brutal the next. "The Winter Wind" weaves its way to plaintive effect through the first act, the band members identified near the start as, amongst others, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Socrates. Those must be fun aliases to have.

Stephen Carlile appears to be channeling Ralph Fiennes (if he were ever to do musicals) as the philosopher-tutor Seneca, and I was thrilled to be reacquainted with the fierce-eyed Sally Dexter, a lustrous Nancy some years back in Oliver!. Cast here as the doomed mother of Nero, Agrippina, who was also sister to the none-too-nice Caligula, she remarks casually at one point about fucking being “the way of royal families, what can I tell you?”. Beats me.

Nero is at Southwark Playhouse to 5 December. Book Nero tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Nero (Photos by Manuel Harlan)