A well known observation has it that comedy is a tragedy that happens to someone else. When a clown sits in a collapsing chair, our laughter is cathartic and explosive. But what about when it’s a republic that’s collapsing. That’s funnier, right?  Amy Freed Author of You Nero

Amy Freed’s observation above could not be more true. One of the joys of entertainment be it live or filmed is escapism. Everyone needs to get away from their problems right?!? What better way to do so than by watching dramas completely divorced from our present day and age? And, oh boy, does You, Nero, deliver the escapism. A nation and empire falling apart while a decadent, out of touch, ruling class dithers on, distracted by its own excesses and petty feuds with zero public accountability. The general public is lulled into a stupor by mass entertainment that caters to the worst possible instincts! Is that totally alien from our present situation or what?

Therein lies the edge to Amy Freed’s You, Nero, currently playing at Arena Stage. It’s supposedly a comedy set 2000 years ago, but it’s a really biting social critique of our current state of affairs. Even the famous fire that destroyed Rome has its modern day equivalent in such disasters as Hurricane Katrina (when our then president really did play the guitar while Nero’s supposed fiddling during Rome was actually fiction) and the way politicians steadily ignore the issue of global warming even as we keep experiencing record temperature highs. And while we don’t cheer on, for instance, alligators chasing Jehovah’s Witnesses (to take an actual skit from the show), we are avid viewers of reality TV and turned Kim Kardashian into a pop icon. Can we really claim to be more civilized?

Aside from its not so subtle parallels to current cultural trends, You, Nero is, in fact, quite entertaining. It’s almost like a South Park treatment of the history of ancient Rome—and I mean that in the best possible way. Nothing is sacred or beyond the limits of good taste—murder, castration, incest, civil war, etc. etc.—everything is rife to be used for humor. This strategy might be the best way to handle ancient Roman history, so bloody and perverse that a serious treatment always tends to overwhelm the viewer. Freed also puts in a few good jabs at the scriptwriting process, given that her narrator Scribonius (played with just the right mixture of seriousness and jest by Jeff McCarthy) is a playwright of great zeal and only questionable talent.

Danny Scheie as Nero, is simply astounding; this is the role he invented and his Nero is perverse, cowardly, petulant, hateful, and, most of all, hilarious. Susannah Schulman is also a hoot as Poppaea the “second most wicked woman in Rome.” She’s a completely disingenuous ingénue type one minute, a femme fatale another minute, and an ice maiden the next.

This is not a show for the easily offended, (when you first walk into the theatre you see pornographic tableaus on a centerpiece on stage), but for everyone else it’s a good laugh. Just remember though, when Washington burns and the Visigoths come racing in to pillage, the laugh will be on us.

Photos by Scott Suchman

You, Nero
By resident playwright Amy Freed
Directed by Nicholas Martin
Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater
1101 Sixth Street, SW
202-554-9066