Titus Andronicus - Review

Barbican Theatre, London


****


Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Blanche McIntyre

David Troughton

The RSC once again proves that Quentin Tarantino aint got nothin’ on good ol’ Bill Shakespeare with this gloriously gruesome production of Titus Andronicus, first seen at Stratford earlier this year and now playing at the Barbican until 17th January. For those Scrooges among us, Titus Andronicus is truly the antithesis to the seasonal festivities as gleeful gore replaces glitter and garlands.

The titular Titus is the badass general in the triumphant Roman army. Returning from a long battle against the Goths and with their Queen Tamora and her delightful (!) sons in tow, Titus kicks off the action by sacrificing the Queen’s oldest son to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war. What follows is a cycle of revenge and pettiness that spirals out of control with the hands of Aaron the Moor (a wicked performance from Stefan Adegbola) firmly on the wheel.

Headed up with an engaging performance from RSC stalwart David Troughton as the frail but somehow still intimidating Titus Andronicus, the play is quite the ride with humour kept firmly at the forefront even as Titus finds himself losing a limb, very slowly. This clever offset of what is Shakespeare’s most bloody and brutal play keeps things as light as they can be, difficult for a three hour production.

A spurned-love opening moment sees Tamora (Nia Gwynne) elevated to Empress of Rome opposite the newly installed Saturninus (Martin Hutson portraying wonderful ignorance) shortly after her son’s sacrifice. Not unreasonably, she bears nothing but terrible intentions and the illustrious Gwynne relishes every minute. Brothers Goth are certainly grim, inspired by their mother’s thirst for vengeance and violence, and almost childish in their pursuit and destruction of Titus’ only daughter Lavinia. Portrayed by Luke MacGregor and Sean Hart as brothers too in love with each other (at the moment platonically) to ever have a meaningful relationship outside their twosome, the actors have fun with the absolute wretchedness of their characters and bounce off each other, sometimes quite literally, with ease.

Marcus (Patrick Drury) heads up what is left of the Andronicus clan with Titus, together with Lucius (the stunning Tom McCall) and Lavinia (Hannah Morrish) who, putting it lightly, suffers a pretty terrible time. This clever quartet are certainly there to be rooted for as the idiots that surround them come crumbling down.

There were a couple of prop mishaps (the bloodiest Shakespeare was a little bloodless at times) that kept the play from being as flawless as other RSC productions. Though backed by the simple fortress set - designed by Robert Innes Hopkins - with many trap doors in which deaths, baths and burials can occur and combined with Blanche McIntyre’s grand and generous direction, the company depicts the tragedy of Titus Andronicus with a chorus of orchestrated bloody chaos that is breathtaking to behold.

Runs until 19th January 2018
Reviewed by Heather Deacon
Photo by Helen Maybanks (c) RSC

Titus Andronicus - Review

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

***

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Blanche McIntyre

David Troughton

Blanche McIntyre strives to give an aura of political correctness to her take on the bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays - but she misses the point. Titus Andronicus is always going to be more about its final act’s Imperial Bake-Off than it will ever be about the failings of society. 

A lengthy mise-en-scene featuring masked social justice warriors protesting about “Austerity” drags the Roman setting to 21st century Britain. As an amuse-bouche it’s certainly well choreographed, (suggesting at times the Crapshooters’ Ballet from Guys and Dolls) but McIntyre protests too much, methinks. However hard a director’s moral compass may point her to dress up Titus Andronicus with a worthy polemic, one must remember that it remains little more than a 16th Century Carry On caper. Misogyny, mutilation, rape and murder drive the narrative, with a degree of violence that by today’s standards would be both offensive and gratuitous.

That’s not to say Titus Andronicus  shouldn't be performed. It merits its place in the canon, but for all McIntyre’s worthy endeavours she’s still delivered a play that treats women abominably and other than, perhaps, Aaron’s scheming lies being labelled as “Fake News”, has little real comment to offer upon today’s events, however broken our world may be perceived to be.

David Troughton is a strong and forceful Titus. His love for Rome is unquestioning as he carries the role of weathered warrior magnificently.  We share his grief and he wins our sympathy as he pursues his own path in this most vengefully vicious circle. Likewise Martin Hutson’s Saturninus is appropriately oleaginous - there’s shades of any politician you may care to think of in his performance, but understand that any such resemblance is fleeting and barely more than superficial. 

Nia Gwynne’s Tamora is a curious casting. Gwynne captures the complex essence of Tamora’s maternal vengeance, and in the final act her portrayal of Revenge is truly ethereal - but she lacks the sex-fuelled stature of a Tamora who’s as capable of seducing Saturninus as she is to wantonly surrendering to Aaron.

Stefan Adegbola and Nia Gwynne

McIntyre is on record as having been kept “awake at night” (and rightly so) that the play’s violence against women is portrayed responsibly, but only in some very small part she has succeeded. Tamora’s wincing (was this an aspect of sisterly concern for Lavinia?) as her sons violently ravished the helpless young woman seemed contrived, as if to suit McIntyre’s agenda rather than define Tamora’s credibility. And again, in the play’s endgame, one might have hoped that McIntyre, as a modern woman, may have offered some tiny moral slant on Titus’ slaying of his daughter as worthy of some critique for the despicable “honour killing” that it truly is, rather than let it flash by in the melee of mealtime madness.

Where McIntyre has offered some new insight is in her use of the supernatural. The spirits of Titus’ dead sons Quintus and Marcius appear often, not least in the scene where Titus overpowers and captures Chiron and Demetrius, assisted by the two dead brothers’ bloodied but muscular ghosts. In a scene that is often hard to explain technically (just how does the old Titus come to overpower two fit and strapping young lads?) McIntyre makes it work. The ghost of Alarbus also appears in a final moment that offers a jolt reminiscent of the closing shock of Stephen King’s Carrie, hinting at the never ending cycle of Rome’s revenging curse.

Hannah Morrish’s Lavinia is a charming if emotionally muted interpretation. Bereft of tongue and hands, the role will always be challenging and whilst Morrish garners our sympathy, were she to dig just a little deeper she’d make us weep. Luke MacGregor and Sean Hart (respectively Chiron and Demetrius) are recognisably modern day thugs. Both actors possess a lithe muscularity that supports their personae and they equally impress, suspended by their ankles, as Titus wreaks his vengeance upon their throats. There’s a hint of TV’s Nick Hewer (or maybe Theresa May’s husband Philip) to Patrick Drury’s Marcus where again, a little more depth might really show an avuncular love for the violated Lavinia.

Arguably the star turn of the night is Stefan Adegbola’s Aaron. His vocal work is perfection and with sparkling eyes and an amazing physicality, Adegbola truly suggests the diabolical, at the same time displaying a love for his bastard child that is as passionate as his contempt for those he ruthlessly despatches.

The lighting, music and design are fun and if there’s a minor niggle, its that the hardworking RSC techies still need to sort out the effectiveness some of the hidden blood bags (especially Bassianus’), where a clumsy special effect can easily shatter the hard won suspension of our disbelief 

The political treatment may be naive, but the merciless misogyny of Titus Andronicus is probably and sadly timeless in too many of today’s multi-cultured communities - it’s only a shame the programme notes don't highlight that particular observation.

Nonetheless, lavishly budgeted productions of Titus Andronicus don’t come along that often and so for that reason if no other, the show is worth a pie-packed trip to Stratford. Or why not book now to see it at the Barbican over Christmas, for a very alternative festive feast!

Runs until 2nd September

Broadcast live to cinemas on 9th August

Plays at the Barbican Theatre, London from 7th December 2017 until 19th January 2018

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks

Taken At Midnight - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, Londom

****

Written by Mark Hayhurst

Directed by Jonathan Church

Penelope Wilton

Taken At Midnight is a carefully researched commentary on Germany during the early years of Hitler’s Chancellorship. The story based on true events, plays out through the eyes of Irmgard Litten whose lawyer son Hans, in 1931, successfully prosecuted Hitler for the thuggish pre-election behaviour of his Nazi Brownshirts. The play opens with Hans’ arrest two years later, on the night that the Reichstag was burned. Hitler is now in power and the arrest is revenge.

Penelope Wilton is Irmgard Litten in a performance that defines her as one of the greats. Committed to liberating her son from being drawn ever deeper into the belly of the Nazi beast, her journey is one of remarkable devotion. She plays the most lovingly committed of mothers, a woman who is simultaneously proud of her son’ principled resistance to the Nazis and at the same time desperate for him to betray his beliefs and lie to the regime, to save his skin. The paradox of her drama could not be more stark nor brutal and Hayhurst gives one of our finest actresses some of the most richly structured dialog of recent modern plays. Wilton’s performance alone demands that the play be seen.

As Hans, Martin Hutson is heartbreaking in his defiance. His performance sees his character be degraded from a presentable professional man to a concentration camp inmate wearing both the yellow star of the Jews, (his father was Jewish) and the red triangle of the political prisoners on that terrible striped camp uniform. From an able bodied man sustaining his beatings, through to a cripple, body broken yet mind intact, Hutson movingly plays out Litten’s destiny.

Hayhurst tells us about much of the everyday detail of the Nazi regime. John Light is Dr Conrad, the Gestapo captain responsible for Litten’s arrest and subsequent incarceration. His clinical detachment in executing his orders is as chilling as would be expected, but what disturbs even more is the chance meeting between him and Irmgard one sunny afternoon in a local park. Out of uniform the charming, chivalrous and refined Conrad offers Irmgard an ice cream, making for a powerful exposition of how the Nazi regime had become so woven into much of German society. Away from the park-bench though, Conrad's teeth are bared when later in the play he venomously expresses his hatred of the half-Jewish Hans. In another gem of a performance, David Yelland's Lord Clifford Allen economically represents Britain’s moral vacuity during its pre-war period of German appeasement.

There is no happy ending to Taken At Midnight, with Hayhurst’s work being historically brilliant even if a little pruriently melodramatic in some of the early torture scenes. The acting is riveting and Church's direction of this Chichester Festival Theatre production is on point throughout. Top notch theatre.

Runs to 14th March 2015