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TheaterApril 2008 Signs of the times by Brooke Allen On Conversations in Tusculum at the Public Theater, The Cherry Orchard Sequel at LaMaMa ETC., Gray Area at the Barrow Group, and Next to Normal at the Second Stage Theater. History may be more than bunk, and more than one damn thing after another, but unfortunately it does not consist of a series of neat, comprehensible lessons; even those who do know history appear doomed to repeat it. Still, the temptation to draw occasionally sententious parallels between present and past seems hard to resist, and the historical period which by common consent seems most nearly parallel to twenty-first century America is that of the end of the Roman republic and beginning of the empire, with George W. Bush usually compared either to Julius Caesar or to the Emperor Augustus. This theme has been the inspiration for Richard Nelson’s Conversations in Tusculum, now playing at the Public Theater with a dream cast that includes Brian Dennehy as Cicero, David Strathairn as Cassius, and Aidan Quinn as Brutus. It is 45 B.C.: Pompey is dead, Cato has killed himself rather ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26 April 2008, on page 38 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/signs-of-the-times-3812
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 The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices Already a print subscriber? click for online access by Brooke Allen On In the Heights at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Almost an Evening at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, Parlour Song at the Atlantic Theater, and The Four of Us at Manhattan Theatre Club. by Brooke Allen On Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall, The Lifeblood at the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, New Jerusalem at the Classic Stage Company, and Two Thousand Years at the New Group. by Brooke Allen On the revival of Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, the Steppenwolf production of August: Osage County, and the return to Broadway of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming forty years after its debut. by Brooke Allen On Hair at the Delacorte Theater, Noël Coward in Two Keys at the Berkshire Theater Festival, and Buffalo Gal at Primary Stages. by Brooke Allen On Of Thee I Sing at Bard Summerscape, and The Understudy & Broke-ology at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. by Brooke Allen On Gypsy at the St James Theatre, Boeing-Boeing at the Longacre Theater, and The New Century at Lincoln Center. New from The New Criterion: ‘Free speech in 
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