Theatre review: Nero

Following Duncan Sheik's (music) sudden death two months ago, Nero could be his and Steven Sater's (book and lyrics) final musical together, unless there's something unfinished waiting in the wings that could be salvaged. In any case, how much this is even the Spring Awakening team's latest work has to be up for debate, as a version of this bizarre biography first premiered twenty years ago. They've evidently been tinkering with it ever since, but on the evidence of Lindsay Posner's production at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, the whole concept needed a lot more overhauling than it got. One of the most notorious of the mad Roman emperors, Nero (Andrew Barth Feldman) comes to power thanks to the machinations of his mother Agrippina (Sally Dexter.) And for "machinations" read "a series of politically advantageous marriages followed by multiple blatant murders."

The latest of these was Emperor Claudius, whose last words gave the crown to his stepson Nero, over his biological heir Britannicus (Timo Tatzber.) He whispered it, and only Agrippina heard it, but it absolutely definitely happened officer.

Nero was an emperor more interested in the arts than ruling, particularly any arts that featured him as the star, and in theory this is the angle Sater and Sheik are exploring here, the manic theatre kid who's ended up in power and uses it to live his Rachel Berry fantasy. It could be a lot of things but flat really shouldn't be one of them, yet this is what it ends up being, and I think it's because it can never decide what it wants to be.

So the mood is confusing - it really should be aiming for camp, or alternatively more of a black comedy, and both are things it tries. But they feel like abrupt tonal changes in a show that's too often trying to take the subject seriously, trying and failing to make its mind up whether Nero is purely a narcissistic man-child or the naïve puppet of his mother and Stephen Carlile's Seneca, who writes all his speeches.

The show finds various possible areas of Nero's life to focus on and as a result ends up a potted biography that just about touches on each element - the more serious focus on his victims doesn't stand a chance when we don't get to know them much, so ending the first act with Britannicus' murder isn't a huge emotional point when we've barely heard from the boy. Nero's stepsister/wife Octavia (Nabi Brown) is selectively mute, and her songs are her inner monologue, but by the time we really get to hear from her it's too late to care much.

Nero's pansexuality is also an element - his icky Oedipal relationship with his mother aside, we also see a lot of him ending up in a throuple with Waylon Jacobs' Tigellinus, the captain of the guards, and his actress wife Poppea (Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky,) whose star quality matches Nero's (or at least the way he imagines people see him.) So among other things what the show could have focused on being is sexy, something we only really see in the second act opener, which Nero spends writhing around with the semi-naked ensemble, while I sit in the audience trying to stop myself yelling "PICK A LANE!"

Georgia Lowe's designs are most effective when they turn Nero essentially into 1970s Elton John complete with tantrums and tiaras, and ultimately that high camp is what the whole show should probably be aiming for, the original premise of the kid who failed his audition so turned the whole Roman Empire into his glee club. With a marginally higher death rate than the TV show.

But there’s so many times when you can see an alternative version that could really work, and clearly Sater and Sheik – and to an extent Posner in the way he interprets the material, including a very half-hearted attempt at the kind of anachronistic touches Spring Awakening did so confidently - saw the same as they can’t bring themselves to choose which one to focus on. The songs are recognisably Sheik’s in style but never among his most attention-grabbing, so they’re definitely not enough to distract from the structural problems.

Nero by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik is booking until the 5th of December at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.