My biases sometimes get the best of me. Seeing Cato by Joseph Addison being staged anywhere is the theatrical equivalent of eating your brussels sprouts: fairly unpleasant, but ultimately good for you. And the Flea made a good go of it: bare bones staging, focusing on language and storytelling, with a roster of tremendous actors. And although Cato shines brightly above other plays of the early 18th century (written in 1711-2), the (my) standards of the period are incredibly low. Still struggling to find a voice after the interregnum, haunted by the ghosts of Elizabethan theatre, and not entirely able to separate from the court masques of decadence and entertainment, the Restoration and early 18th century produced a body of plays that were made of stock characters, predictable scenarios, and incredibly two-faced impressions of virtue and morality. Which certainly makes them interesting, fascinating theatrical artifacts really. But not all that enjoyable to read or watch.
With exciting turns by André De Shields as Cato, Anthony Cochrane as Sempronius, and Brian O’Neill as Lucius, the play is incredibly digestible; if nothing else, a chance to see some wonderful actors tear it up. You can tell they’re truly enjoying this performance oddity.
The one bone I would have to pick with the production though is their historical contextualization for the audience. Indeed, Cato was a favorite play of the likes of George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Nathan Hale. Indeed, Washington had the play staged at Valley Forge, and Hale ripped off his famous “I regret that I have but one life to live for my country” almost verbatim from the play. But featured prominently at the top of the program, we read: “The Flea Theatre offers a truly Magnificent Work revived expressly for this Presidential Election Year.” The parallel and point is fairly self-evident: Cato as virtuous statesman, attempting to overthrow the tyranny of Caesar.
But although the play was considered an apt allegory for pre-Revolution Americans, we here in the 21st century would see this as more of a warning. When Arthur Miller reconsidered the tragic hero in 1948, he wrote of the struggles from the bottom-up; the common man (anyone else hear Copland ringing in the ear right now?). Perhaps the Flea would have been better off staging Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731); still, not a tremendous play, but at least one, which depicts a citizen oppressed by economic and political forces. Tragic heroes just don’t do it for me (us) anymore. In short: Cato loses. Big time! Virtue and dignity and honor are no match for the power and influence of Caesar, which makes the whole experience depressing more than anything else. The company perhaps focused way too much on Addison’s heavy-handed morality, when they could have emphasized the much more resonant and powerful traitor Syphax:
The boasted ancestors of these great men,
Whose virtues you admire, were all such ruffians.
This dread of nations, this almighty Rome,
That comprehends in her wide empire's bounds
All under heaven, was founded on a rape.
You Scipios, Caesars, Pompeys, and your Catos,
(These gods on earth) are all the spurious brood
Of violated maids, of ravish'd Sabines.
Now that's good theatre.
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