Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
Fri 12 Apr
words: MARIA-LUISA MEREDITH
★★★★★
“I don’t care about killing because I don’t care about dying”. It’s certainly no picnic dealing with someone who thinks like that and the Senators of Rome are really struggling in this enthralling production of Caligula by Welsh theatre company August 012. This modern translation of the 1939 classic play by existentialist French writer, Albert Camus, shows us a man freefalling into madness, and asking why we’re here and if anything really matters.
While the principle cast are all male, local senior citizens from Age Cymru engagingly play members of the senate. As we take our seats, they broadcast live news reports via screens around the space telling us our eponymous emperor is AWOL, then sit among us to chat familiarly about the crazy goings on, offering crisps and grapes from their tea trolleys.
At last a wired Caligula returns, peroxide-haired, and in a dirty white shirt he darts around the space. Christopher Elson and Adam Redmore, swapping roles throughout, play the emperor with unhinged brilliance. They’re able to bring vulnerability and poise to the disgraceful emperor while also displaying perfect comic timing. The Emperor wants the moon in his hands. Why? “Because it’s one of the things I haven’t got”. Perfect logic, used less eloquently by many a toddler. Insisting that it’s more honest to steal openly from his citizens he suggests murdering them randomly, but seeing that this horrifies the senators he concedes that they can do it alphabetically if they like.
Nathan Sussex is mesmerising as Caesonia, Caligula’s lover. In hot pink stilettos and sumptuous fur, Sussex invents a whole new sexual genre, bringing an indefinable masculine sensuousness to the female role.
Caligula’s only ally Helicon, played with hip-hop swagger by John Norton, makes futile attempts to carry out Caligula’s ridiculous and impulsive demands, but he’s much happier dropping beats.
The ultra-modern staging of a classical play could be distracting but director Mathilde Lopez and designer Buddug James Jones combine perfectly to ensure that the performance keeps the audience alert, amused and totally satisfied. This production is the antidote to slouching passively in a darkened auditorium slurping gallons of liquid sugar while checking your phone, and it does what all live theatre should: excite and engage the audience, sending them on a mystery tour around their own consciousness, until the lights fade to black.