Play review - "Romulus" by Gore Vidal

A bright, witty look at the last days of the last Roman Emperor, a terrific subject with an ideal writer, Vidal liking tales of kings and so on, and at the time had been writing Julian. It didn't meet with public favour - Vidal argues in the intro that this was because the humour contained too many digs at the audience i.e. middle class types; I'd rather think it was because the story's going to have an unhappy ending (Rome will fall - and Romulus's wife, daughter and son-in-law all die after he thinks they've gone off to safety), but also that New York audiences weren't that interested in Rome. I think this would have been a hit in London - the British seem to have a strong connection to Rome, with its monarchs, empire, ruling class, slaves, etc. Strong story and entertaining with an interesting central conceit, i.e. Romulus became Emperor to bring the whole thing crashing down, that reminded me of Messiah at times.