Word: caligulas
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...would only take it in. Try to call up a picture of your father's death, of the agony on his face as they were tearing out his tongue. Think of the blood streaming from his mouth, and recall his screams, like a tortured animal (Pause). Now think of Caligula (Pause). Now try to understand...
Caesonia asks not just Scipio, but the entire audience, to empathize with Caligula and to understand the magnitude of his misery--the torture that drives an individual to such sadism. But Martinez delivers the lines in a flip, spiteful tone--not at all imploringly or sensitively--and, as a result, another numeral of the combination to the play's thematic lock fails to click with the audience...
...plot of Caligula is unspectacular: young, idealistic prince turns into ruthless emperor; ruthless emperor regrets past sins and kills himself--a Freudian explanation for the motives behind the suicide (the death of the emperor's sister-mistress) is available for those non-believers in the true power of spiritual anguish. But the philosophical and moral message of the play is much closer to post-Marxian France than to Rome during the Pax Romana. The young, callow Caligula recognizes the hypocrisy of the dominant values and mores. Devoted to exposing the irrationality of society, he sets out to accomplish the impossible...
...time passes, Caligula realizes that historical forces--not emperors--change mankind and that he too cannot escape fate, determinism, predestination. Caligula rebels against the Gods of fate. He tries, through murder and the systematic perversion of all values, to prove the liberty of his own will, challenging friendship and love, common human solidarity, good and evil. But one cannot destroy all without destroying oneself. Caligula is the story of a spectacular suicide...
Matti Savolainen, who plays the part of Carea, one of the few intelligent defenders of the society Caligula sets out to destroy, fails to exude the shrewd acrimony of the practical man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. This villain sports a long, thin moustache and a Latin accent, suggesting the Frito Bandito loose in the Roman Empire. Sonia Martinez evokes the right amount of cruelty, sensuality, and vacuousness that you would expect from a woman who devotes her life to a man who kills for reasons she finds incomprehensible, although she misses the more...