A dark and thrilling new production is Shakespeare for the Post-Tarantino age. By Rosie Millard
Titus Andronicus
Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1
For this production of the gory shocker from Shakespeare, the director Lucy Bailey and designer William Dudley have used a black awning to block the sky from the Globe, a theatre that depends largely on natural light. The stage is swathed in black, while clouds of incense and dry ice obscure the atmosphere, and the actors are clad in monochrome tones: white, brown and royal purple. This serves to make the gouts of blood that course through the production stand out all the better. Here is a dark, gloomy Titus, literally dripping in the red stuff.
Bailey has relished the challenge of the Globe and has gone for theatre in the round, in the widest possible term. Our senses are bewitched throughout the grisly goings-on, by the smell of burning incense, the jangling sound of Django Bates's disturbing music, and the spectacular visuals ranging from torrential cascades of spinning confetti to a boar hunt through the centre of the auditorium. This is total theatre, and the auditorium is used to stunning effect.
The production makes the most of the interactive nature of the Globe, where the audience includes 200 "groundlings" who stand around its thrust stage into the centre of the hall. Here, they are cast as members of the Roman public; they are pushed and pulled, at one point surrounding the despotic Saturninus (a menacing Patrick Moy) as he proclaims his right to inherit the Republic, then crowding around the evil Aaron (Shaun Parkes) as he offers up his life for his infant son. The play is part of a series that the Globe's new artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole, has called "The Edges of Rome", and by placing the audience at the heart of the action, Bailey evokes the chaos of a leaderless republic.
Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Geraldine Alexander), is the ruthless heart of this Titus. Arriving as a prisoner bound in chains, she metamorphoses into an empress sashaying across the stage in a pair of giant cork wedges and a pencil-slim dress - menacingly sexy, and pitiless with it. Her mind is focused with the resolve of someone who understands that the only way to get true revenge is, literally, to sleep with the enemy. She preens her lascivious, bestial sons like a lioness, and has no time for the vulnerable. It's a classy take on the evil stepmother role.
Less charismatic, unfortunately, is Titus himself. Douglas Hodge certainly goes for it, but with his reed-thin voice and limited physical presence, he lacks the necessary sword-wielding stature for the role. Titus is not a classical tragic hero, but we need to believe that the future of the Republic rests on his shoulders: that Titus's downfall is Rome's downfall. Hodge does not carry this off. He comes into his own during the infamous cannibalistic pie-eating scene, but by this stage, his character seems more doolally than doomed.
The bloodshed is completely convincing, however, and this is what everyone comes to see Titus Andronicus for. In the 1950s, Peter Brook got all arty with it, using red ribbons as blood, but in this post-Tarantino era, that won't do, and Bailey knows it. We get through the rather tiresome political speeches and thudding comic relief at breakneck speed, but all the nasty stuff - complete with plenty of spurting stage blood - is done as if in slow motion.
The mutilated Lavinia, delicately played by Laura Rees, provides the most stomach-churning scene of all. Minus hands, tongue and virginity, she appears on stage, shuddering in shock, dreadfully mute, for what seems like an age, before she slowly turns her head and lets flow a long stream of black blood from her mouth. At this point, at least three people in the audience fainted. In the interval, a steward told me that 15 people had been carried out. The Globe lost several more ticketholders when Lavinia picked up Titus's severed hand with her mouth, like an obedient spaniel carrying a stick to its master. This is a gross, but engrossing, night - if you have the stomach for it. l
Booking details available from www.shakespeares-globe.org
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