Photo credit: Manuel Harlan
Nero
book & lyrics Steven Slater
Music by Duncan Sheik. Southwark Playhouse Elephant, Dante Place, London SE1 | until 5 December 2026.
⭐ Review by William Russell
“More Zero than Nero.”
Competent performances, a perfectly decent band, rather meaningless energetic choreography and the occasional dazzling costume, although a young man in brassiere is hardly decadent these days, are all there in this awful musical by Sheik and Slater. That it should come from the pen of the men who created Spring Awakening is one of those things. It began life in 2008 in a college production and a couple of workshop productions followed but it never made The Great White Way, let alone off it, and seeing it now, it is perfectly clear why. It is not, as Steven Slater seems to think, in the least Shakespearian when it comes to goings on in Ancient Rome, nor are there any obvious things to be drawn from it relating to life under Donald Trump as some writing about it before hand have suggested. Nero played by Andrew Garth Feldman, is a stage-struck kid who wants to be in the limelight and is encouraged by his Mother Agrippina, played by Sally Dexter giving her all in the hope assumes of a job in pantomime over Christmas as a wicked fairy or stepmother. Feldman sings pleasantly enough and struts about a lot trying to be decadent but ending up simply as a good-looking young man stomping about the place trying to be sensual and snuggling up too close to his mother. As for historical fact, well there are traces of it here and there - but very few. While the song styles do range rather more widely than in what is commonly called rock opera missing is one you remember once free of the theatre. As to why it has been staged, well we were given a handy booklet about Sensee Company based in Korea which produces musical theatre and has come to the show's rescue from oblivion by backing this production. Obviously if you are Korean there is something about mad tyrants running amok that strikes close to home and for the rest of us when it comes to men obsessed with gold then one need only look to the land of the free for a role model. But it really does the real Nero an injustice. Director Lindsay Posner has kept everyone rushing about all over the place and there is one nice moment when varous hunks and Feldman get wrapped up in a large cloak of gold, but when the time comes to burning Rome there is hardly a flicker of flame anywhere. Money has been spent and most people who love musicals will go to anything but sometimes a line should be drawn, and this musical is where to draw it – as a work in progress it did not progress for patently good reasons and should have been left where it was. On the shelf - with all the other might have beens.
Cast
Andrew Barth Feldman – Nero
Stephen Carlile – Seneca
Sally Dexter – Agrippina
Nabi Brown – Octavia
Timo Tatzber – Britannicus
Waylon Jacobs – Tigellinus
Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky
Liam Wrate, Izzy Formby-Jackson, Zodie Knight, Rory Maguire, Zach Parkin. Amy Punter, Reese O'Connell – Ensemble.
Creatives
Director – Lindsay Posner
Choreographer – James Cousins.
Designer – Georgia Lowe
Lighting Designer – Robbie Butler
Sound Design – Tony Gayle
Wigs, Hair & Makeup Design – Dominique Hamilton
Musical Director – Ben McQuigg
Intimacy Director – Lucy Fennell
Fight Director – Maggie Carter
