Livia
Paul David Young’s "Livia: A Roman Tragedy," now receiving its world premiere at The Flea Theater, approaches the political present by way of an increasingly endangered past, imagining the final convulsions of the Roman Republic as an unsettling reflection of contemporary American democracy. In this fictional portrait of Livia Drusilla, the formidable historical figure associated with Augustus and the consolidation of imperial power, Young substitutes a woman of conscience for the politically calculating survivor history has generally made her out to be. His Livia is stranded in Rome while her lover has departed to join an armed rebellion against an increasingly erratic, venal emperor, whose administration of the state involves banishment, imprisonment, executions and the systematic intimidation of anyone foolish enough to challenge him. Left to contemplate the disintegration of the society around her, she attempts to understand how a once-functioning republic surrendered itself to authoritarian rule, and whether an individual, however isolated, can still make a difference. The premise is compelling, and the contemporary correspondences are hardly difficult to recognize. Yet the production, directed by Danilo Gambini, is considerably more successful at conveying the urgency of its political anxieties than at transforming them into sustained theatrical drama. [more]