“Gordon Dahlquist’s Messalina is not the first play in which the American Empire has been compared to the decadence and decline of the Roman Empire but his end-of-the-world dinner party, in the hands of director Bart DeLorenzo, is rife with zeitgeist. Pinteresque menace shades not only whatever is going on in the world depicted on a soundless TV set but shadows the obtuse indifference of the six characters who don’t seem to care whether the natural disaster is in the next continent or the next county.” – Laura Hitchcock, Curtain Up

World premiere at the Evidence Room, October 2003