From the director

Romulus: We are at the razor’s edge. My friends, today of all days we wear the

mask of Comedy!

When I first read this play, I thought it was interesting, clever, and chock full

of allusions that could be humorously relevant to our current political climate.

A Fall comedy about the Fall of the Roman Empire for a community that I

hoped would not have already been so relentlessly flogged by a campaign season

(which itself would be comic if the stakes were not so high) that no one could

muster a chuckle.

But as it turns out, Romulus, the Emperor, is a pretty dark guy; an absolutist

who deliberately steers the bus (with everyone on it) over a cliff as a moral

example. That’s not a comic hero one necessarily wants to laugh along with.

In fact, over the past 10 weeks as our troupe brought this work to life, I began

to realize that what I had thought was mostly a satiric comedy is, at its core, a

rather somber meditation on our society safely dressed up in the garb of antiquity.

Yet, Gore Vidal, one of the most urbane, scholarly, and acerbic social

commentators of his day, clearly had a soft spot for our country’s dedication to

the peaceful transfer of power. He wrote this play when McCarthyism was still

a raw wound, the Cold War was raging, and the presidential campaign of 1960,

which pitted Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy, had just concluded by an

historically slim margin.

In an almost sentimental twist, when the nihilistic protagonist, Romulus, finally

meets Ottaker the Goth -- the enemy of civilization who has waged war because

of public opinion to advance an “ism” which he knows is meaningless -- there

is no bloodbath; there is no head on a pike. There is a peaceful, if curious,

transfer of power.

Voltaire observed, “True comedy is the ‘speaking picture’ of the follies and

foibles of a nation.” And Vidal added to that, “True comedy uses everything. It

is sharp; it is topical; it does not worry about its own dignity…it merely mocks

the false dignity of others.”

I hope that our interpretation of this odd, funny, and provocative play

illuminates some dark patches in our own political landscape – or at least helps

us pose the right questions. Lord knows there has been no shortage of follies

and foibles as we make our own transition from one political leader to the next.

Rina Steinhauer