TITUS Andronicus is often cited as Shakespeare’s bloodiest drama and like all good slasher movies this procession of horrendous cruelty comes with a warning.
If the steadily simmering anger and jealousy of the first part isn’t enough to suggest the mayhem to come, then the blood red sprinkler system above and the foot-high perspex splash guard protecting the front row certainly don’t bode well.
The machinations of men seeking power over each other and, more chillingly, over women drives plot after plot leaving a trail of violence and revenge streaked across the stage.
Max Webster’s production starts out in an almost monochrome sombreness. The plain set is matched by Joanna Scotcher’s design which never moves far from a blue and grey palette. By the end of course, it’s all red.
Simon Russell Beale’s Titus is a man seasoned in taking crucial decisions affecting the lives of others without really ever really disturbing his equilibrium. Only as events turn against him and those close to him do we begin to see real emotion and the slide from one to another is beautifully handled.
The banality of violence and its damage is nowhere better displayed than in the ‘family dinner from Hell’ that opens the second half and gives a foretaste of the sickening feast which will eventually round the whole thing off.
Emma Fielding as Titus’s sister charts an equally enthralling descent from calm into chaos and Natey Jones as the scheming Aaron is both chilling and tender before his ultimate date with doom.
While Shakespeare may originally have set his focus principally on the inevitability of violence bringing revenge, to modern audiences the play now carries unavoidable elements of deep-seated racism and the consequences of rape.
The shock of both is tackled front-on in this production and the idea that a victim of brutal rape and torture should be silenced by the family to avoid shame is, to modern sensibilities, probably more shocking than serving up your enemy’s children in a pie.
Each murderous act – and there are plenty to witness – heralds the arrival of another piece of motorised abattoir equipment dangling from the overhead rail. Brutality, or certainly its carefully choreographed cousin, abounds with a thumping industrial soundtrack to hammer home every throat-slitting atrocity.
By the end, the stage and the cast are soaked in blood and it’s an outwardly innocent child who presses the button on the final live incarceration. Another gruesome killing in an evening full of gore and effect but perhaps a little short on much else.
