Berkeley Rep Blog

Previous entry: Ad conformity!
Next entry: Throwing limbs is not easy: I don't have good aim

Nearly everything's in Nero

posted by Terence Keane on Tue, Jun 23, 2009
in Our shows

As I watched You, Nero the other night, I was surprised to see that it unintentionally contains amusing allusions to the other shows in our season. What a perfect way to end the year:

• There's the scene near the top of the show in which Scribonius watches the gladiators fight at the Colosseum. He gets pelted with bloody limbs, which are not -- but certainly could have been -- leftover props from The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
• 

  Which one is Scheherazade?

  
  There's the scene in which, as he tries to write dialogue for his play, he speaks the lines at the same time that they're acted out on stage. It's almost as if he's Scheherazade in Mary Zimmerman's version of The Arabian Nights.

• Then Nero explains how it's OK that he commited the most horrific of crimes because he's an important person and his family is "different." Isn't that the same philosphical argument propounded by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment?

• Finally, I'm pretty sure I glimpsed a gold bikini at the end of Act One, which makes me think of a certain princess named Leia. And right now we're preparing for the return of that particular Jedi... In July, Carrie Fisher reprises her solo show, Wishful Drinking, at Berkeley Rep before she and Tony take it to Broadway. She'll only be here for 15 performances, so get those tickets now.

I know that Amy Freed didn't mean to sum up our season in one script, but it was a fun game to play as I watched the show. I wasn't clever enough to draw connections to Yellowjackets, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, or In the Next Room -- but maybe you can find one? Let me know.

Photos by Kevin Berne:
Sofia Jean Gomez and Alana Arenas in The Arabian Nights
Kasey Mahaffy, Lori Larsen, and Jeff McCarthy in You, Nero