Revenge: A dish best served in a pie
- Wynne Lang
- May 1
- 4 min read
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from Thursday 17 April to Saturday 7 June. Directed by Max Webster.
Review by Wynne Lang
Titus Andronicus was, apparently, Shakespeare’s first published play. His Elizabethan audience, fresh possibly from watching the bear-baiting, loved it. However, its lurid violence was not well received in the 18th and 19th centuries; when the play was revived by Sir Peter Hall in 1955 at the start of a new Elizabethan age, it hadn’t been staged in 300 years.
Squeamish audience members have been known to react badly to the horrors depicted on stage in this play; but I must say no one in the auditorium of the Swan Theatre on press night seemed to have any attack of the vapours. There were nervous laughs from time to time, but the modern touchstones of this play are Quentin Tarantino movies and hyper-realistic video games- unless your screen life has been sheltered indeed you will likely be familiar with blood-letting and dismemberment.
Titus Andronicus returns heroically to Rome having defeated the Goths. He brings prisoners; Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her three sons, and her secret lover, the Moor, Aaron. Titus is asked to be Emperor of Rome, but declines. He supports the son of the dead Emperor, Saturninus. Saturninus is about to take Titus’s daughter Lavinia, (inconveniently betrothed to his brother Bassianus), in marriage, when he is allured by Tamora, and chooses her instead, Titus has had Tamora’s eldest son executed and dismembered as a blood sacrifice, so the decision to release Tamora and the other prisoners threatens him.
And so, a horrifying spiral of vengeance follows. Orchestrated by Aaron, Lavinia is raped by Tamora’s sons, Chiron and Demetrius, who cut out her tongue and cut off her hands to protect themselves. Bassianus is murdered and Titus’s sons implicated. To gain their release, Titus cuts off his hand and sends it to Saturninus; he receives their heads, along with his hand back, in return. Lavinia is able to scratch the names of her attackers in the sand with a stick; their come-uppance follows when her brother Lucius returns to threaten Rome with an army, They are murdered and Titus has them baked in a pie, which he serves to their mother and Saturninus at a supposedly reconciling dinner. That’s not even the end of the killing.
This new RSC production stars one of the great Shakespearean actors of our age, Simon Russell Beale, as Titus. And while he’s every bit as good as you would imagine, it’s a testament to the strength of the ensemble playing that he doesn’t stand out - every cast member is excellent. Titus is not a tragic hero of the type explored in the later plays- rather, terrible things happen to him brought on by his actions, not character flaws. But Beale imbues him with humanity, and while you can detect the warrior spirit there’s also a frailty of an old man struggling to keep his head above the rising tide.
Similarly, Natey Jones brings humanity and charisma to the problematic role of African Aaron. Intensely watchable on stage, he brings the tenderest moments to the play in his acceptance of his baby son by Tamora - rejected because of its dark skin, and speaks often from a position of black pride, as the exotic outsider to the social norms of Rome.
Letty Thomas as Lavinia is extraordinary in the pathos she generates after her mutilation, somehow communicating her anguish through mangled noises instead of speech, and Joshua James too is utterly convincing as the brittle and capricious Saturninus.
The production and direction though, will ensure this version of Titus Andronicus will live in the memory. The violence is front and centre, and blood is literally sprayed. Plastic sheeting is unrolled, and a chain saw wielded; the brothers are suspended upside down as if in an abattoir. If this sounds excessive, it is - but it’s done with just enough of a nod and a wink that the absurdity of it all is always evident. We are violent animals, yet absurdly, we claim to be rational- seems to sum up this phase of imperial Rome, if not 2000 years of our modern history.
The animal motif is powerfully embodied in the unexpected choreography of the play; between scenes, characters lope across and around the stage as if mimicking animal movements, and at one point supporters of Saturninus and Titus crouch in animalistic poses opposite each other, snarling. Characters also howl, and before their captures and deaths, Chiron and Demetrius put on dog masks.
And special praise must be given to the sound production team. This is not a play for musical interludes, but the unsettling, ominous sound design with seat -shaking bass suited it perfectly.
For tickets contact the Box Office 01789 331111 or visit: https://www.rsc.org.uk/titus-andronicus
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