ROMAN ACTOR: RSC at the Gielgud, till 24 January

THE ROMAN ACTOR: Philip Massinger
Gielgud Theatre: Tkts 0870 890 1105
In repertoire till 24 January Season extended to 25 March
Runs 2h 30m, one interval

London Review: Vera Lustig, 14 December

The RSC at their best and their most deserving of a permanent London home. A welcome revival of Massinger's favourite among his works: crisp, witty, eminently watchable, chilling.
The menacing drone of flies, homing in on carrion, tops and tails this story of decay and death. Sun-drenched Rome languishes under the emperor Domitian, a self-styled god with a whim of iron and a horde of willing executioners, who meticulously record his achievements in a tiny black notebook.

While the heavily censored Roman stage is an arena for zanily stylised social comment, life under Domitian is pure theatre. To survive, one must dissemble; a son is forced, on pain of death, to witness impassively his father's execution for failing to respond to a play which mirrored his avarice. Torture is a public event, with Caesar orchestrating the cries of the tormented and the silence of the onlookers. Domitian's edicts are metallically intoned by men in bronze masks.

The eponymous tragedian, Paris, opens the play by commenting on Domitian's corruption of both life and theatre, but ends up being sucked into the Pirandellian fusion of the two, thanks to his temerity in usurping Caesar's bed. The charismatic Joe Dixon gives Paris just the right degree of actorish swagger.

His reign of terror described in Massinger's muscular, lucid verse long before he appears, Domitian does not disappoint. He makes a grandiose entrance, wheeled centre stage on a lofty plinth. Antony Sher is, as always, magnetic. His high, rounded voice is so supple, so charged with malign intelligence, that his sotto voce is devastating. He does not need to strike macho poses: think Hitler's effeminate salute. Sher adopts the splayed gait of a toddler in nappies. He is constantly reinventing himself, testing the limits of his power. Sher demonstrates the warped infantilism at the heart of tyranny.

And power does have limits, tyrants are destructible. Throughout, Massinger hints that it is ourselves we are watching on stage. It is our own unhinged world we see, our compliance and our complicity.

Aesopus: Wayne Cater
Latinus: Michael Matus
Paris: Joe Dixon
Aelius Lamia: Keith Osborn
Junius Rusticus: Joshua Richards
Palphurius Sura: Geoffrey Freshwater
Domitia: Anna Madeley
Parthenius: Antony Byrne
Aretinus Clemens: Michael Thomas
Caenis: Sian Howard
Julia: Shelley Conn
Domitilla: Amanda Drew
Domitian Caesar: Antony Sher
Philargus: David Acton
Stephanos: Sean Hannaway
Ascletario: Paul Bhattacharjee
First Tribune: Jamie Glover
Second Tribune: Billy Carter

Director: Sean Holmes
Design: Anthony Lamble
Lighting: Wayne Dowdeswell
Music: Adrian Lee
Sound: Martin Slavin

2002-12-19 20:20:22