Titus Andronicus

Just got back from an 80 minute all-male performance of Titus Andronicus, a Shakespeare play where all I knew going in was that someone’s children get baked in a pie. My expectations were satisfied (although I hadn’t anticipated the cook in a Denny’s outfit capering gleefully and going “nom nom nom!” in the background at the appropriate moment), and it was also very good; dark, fast, funny and appalling. I don’t see how you could possibly do it as anything other than farce in parts, actually, for all that it’s a play that stems very much from one character’s tragic flaw (also, I don’t know what happens with all the extra time, although I suspect a lot of monologuing. Hmm. And having just checked on-line, more sex and violence).

It’s done by the drama school, and is alternating nights with an all-female Romeo and Juliet (booked out, although Titus was actually my first preference). I presume they’re using different theatres; the staging for Titus was very effective, but Romeo and Juliet probably needs less of a post-apocalyptic schoolyard feel to it. The play started bang on time, as well, with the cast (in vast amounts of eyeliner – they are, some of the time, Goths) tossing round a teddy-bear in a game of keep-away, while one of them (pinned down on stage) tries to get it back. The audience was a bit less prompt and kept filtering in through the first five minutes of this, hampered slightly by the fact that the stage itself was between the door and the seating. When everyone was seated, the pinned-down guy made a final grab for the teddy-bear; was caught, stripped and had his kneepads taped to his chest, becoming Queen Tamora of the Goths, who made one last attempt to plead for the life of her son the teddy-bear before teddy was whisked off stage and returned with his head on a pike. An awful lot of bloody vengeance ensues.

( Spoilers for 400+ year old play. )