Nero at Southwark Playhouse Elephant: a musical with great songs and too many ideas
Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's long-delayed Nero has reached Elephant & Castle, with a talented cast and strong songs but a muddled tone.
It has taken the best part of two decades for Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's Nero to reach a stage. This weekend it is playing at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, and Everything Theatre's review rates it "OK": a talented cast and some terrific songs, but a muddled evening overall.
A long road to Elephant & Castle
According to Everything Theatre, the programme notes are refreshingly frank about the show's journey. It was first conceived in the days of George W. Bush's war on terror, and got little traction in New York beyond a few workshops. The reviewer says it reached London after South Korean producers showed interest. Park Myung-Sung and Seensee Company are the credited producers.
The timing, the review suggests, works in its favour: just right for mocking 2026's Trumpian values.
What works
The music is the draw. Sheik, the Tony Award-winning composer, died this September, which gives the score extra weight. Everything Theatre says there are some great songs, and that Sater's lyrics, also Tony-recognised, are still very much in evidence. The reviewer preferred Act Two, with its trip into the "Mind of Nero" and the number "Ghost in a Box". Fans of Spring Awakening, the pair's 2006 musical, should leave with tunes to hum on the way home.
The cast gets praise too, with a mix of accents the review describes as a mid-Atlantic, London-Broadway crossover:
- Andrew Barth Feldman, a Broadway import as Nero, is best as a nebbish man-child.
- Sally Dexter is described as a delight as his over-attentive mother, Agrippina.
- Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky plays Poppea, bringing genuine rock star vibes to her numbers.
The satire is the show's strongest element, according to the review.
What doesn't
The trouble is that the satire has to fight through a heap of capital-D drama. Everything Theatre points to Nero's tortured relationship with his mother, and says the show cannot decide whether it is playing Oedipal lust for laughs. It does, the reviewer notes, give its Act 2 love duet to a mother and son.
The visual language is mixed as well. Costumes are largely Roman, apart from Nero, who ends up looking like David Bowie. Pistols and suitcases appear, along with a final twist the review calls unearned. The dialogue is contemporary, except when Greek drama is invoked or Shakespeare is quoted directly.
The staging is stripped back. The band sits on a balcony above the action. The first half is played largely on an empty stage framed by red velvet curtains, and the second act drops the velvet for a mirrored back wall and the feel of a rehearsal studio. With limited resources, the review says, Lindsay Posner's direction has the cast entering, decrying and leaving a few times too often.
The verdict: the show cannot decide whether it is political satire, psychological tragedy, crude vaudeville comedy or a no-holds-barred rock musical. Each has flashes of brilliance, but they compete rather than complement one another.
The team
- Book and lyrics: Steven Sater
- Music: Duncan Sheik
- Director: Lindsay Posner
- Set and costume designer: Georgia Lowe
- Choreographer: James Cousins
- Musical supervisor, vocal arranger and co-orchestrator: Phil Bateman
- Musical director and co-orchestrator: Ben McQuigg
- Lighting designer: Robbie Butler
- Sound designer: Tony Gayle
Know before you go
- Where: Southwark Playhouse Elephant, Elephant & Castle
- When: until Saturday 5 December
Sources: Everything Theatre
