Britannicus at Theatre for the New City

Racine, 1669 

There was a time when all and sundry could enjoy a play in New York without taking out a home equity loan on their already voracious mortgage. Now that Times Square is essentially the fulcrum of the country's consumer debt, to which each American adult perpetually owes an average of $8,000, the exorbitant ticket prices hardly register to the punch drunk as they scan their monthly statements, so Broadway is reportedly doing very nicely out of the general malaise of usuary and Off Off Off Broadway seems to have vanished along with affordable rent and the $5 diner. Except, it hasn't, as evidenced by the eponymous and  (word for a thing that is what it sounds like) Theatre of the New City, down in what is left of the East Village, where new and old work is performed without let or hindrance from either banker nor property developer, and talent young and old can be seen performing a huge range of work, seven nights a week. On Thursday I went to a riveting performance of Racine's "Britannicus" (written in 1669) which was presented with conviction, professional skill and complete absorption in the text without compromising a highly realistic and engaging experience for the audience. In particular, the legendary Andrew R. Cooksey and Irvina Ruth, both veterans of American theatre with countless achievements who are greatly well-known but enjoy almost no fame as it might be conventionally understood, grounded the cast in decades of experience and capability, while all of the younger cast members demonstrated the powerful combination of youth, aptitude and training having been recently graduated from college acting schools in the New York area. Stehen Kime as the insane young Emperor Nero had a chilling sense of madness in his eyes and a malevolent stance which made the audience shudder at his every entry, and Tyler Austin's exacting standards as the sixteen year old Britannicus were matched only by his exemplary pulchritude which will no doubt serve him well in years to come should he ever reconcile his interest in drag, saxophone playing and the classics into some cogent form accessible to the masses who, for now, are sending themselves broke by paying up to $1,500 for a ticket to much less rewarding shows on the great White Way.