Titus Andronicus - Review

Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Max Webster

Natey Jones takes a chainsaw to Simon Russell Beale's hand

It is a rare treat that sees a theatrical giant step up to the role of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's tragedy that boasts the Bard's highest body count. So it is that a one-handed Simon Russell Beale dons his chef’s apron to lead us through Max Webster’s modern take on the tale. Jet fighters roar overhead in the mise-en-scene suggesting that this is a turbulent Rome at war with the Goths and set is to become the arena for revenge -fuelled murder and mayhem.

Beale offers up one of the most sensitively nuanced takes on the noble general, delivering perfectly pitched pathos amidst the carnage, while also understanding the comedic themes that underscore the play. Late in the play, when his Titus greets Wendy Kweh’s Tamora masked up as the spirit of Revenge, Beale milks the moment exquisitely – we know the violence that is about to be unleashed and yet it is impossible not to grin at the charade being played out on stage. Beale equally imbues Titus’ tragic moments – notably manifest if his love for his grievously injured daughter Lavinia (Letty Thomas) – with a powerful emotional depth

Natey Jones’s Aaron is the production’s stand-out supporting performance. The energy in his evilness is palpable, with his Act 5 confessional monologue delivered as a hymn to barbarity. Jones inhabits the verse with a gripping excitement that makes for a rollercoaster ride of Shakespearean delight.

The evening’s other cracking performance is from Kweh who captures Tamora’s smouldering and insatiable sexuality with a fiercely brutal streak of the harshest cruelty. *SPOILER ALERT* In the final act, asTamora learns that the pasty that she is eating includes her sons' flesh, that Webster has her return for a second helping only underscores her fierce defiance.

There is exquisite pathos too from Letty Thomas whose Lavinia suffers the most unspeakable degradation.  For reasons not explained Titus’ brother Marcus Andronicus is gender-swapped to Marcia, played by Emma Fielding. In the scene in the woods that sees Lavinia discovered by her aunt uncle following her rape and mutilation, the scene's usual powerful tenderness seemed blunted in this iteration.   

There is a touch of Hollywood to Webster’s highly mechanised and stylised violence. Hooks descend from gantries and while the stabbings may all be suggested with murderer and victim often metres apart on stage, strobe lighting and gallons of stage-blood make for a gloriously horrific ambience. Matthew Herbert’s music that accompanies moments of carefully choreographed movement, adds to the evening’s compelling ghastliness. The blood flows so copiously in this production that the actors occasionally slip on the Swan’s sanguine soaked thrust. Audience members in the stalls’ front splash-zone seats are offered protective waterproofs, sparing them from soggy bottoms during the finale’s blood-soaked bake off.

A good Titus Andronicus should offer up an evening of entertaining violence that also draws out the story’s vicious misogyny and unspeakable cruelty. Simon Russell Beale serves up a mouth-watering performance.

Runs until 7th June

Photo credit: Max Brenner

Dr Faustus - Review

Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon


****


Written by Christopher Marlowe
Directed by Maria Aberg

Oliver Ryan

Much of what makes The RSC great is embodied in Maria Aberg’s Doctor Faustus, now playing in Stratford’s Swan Theatre. A classic Elizabethan text that is given an invigorating and challenging interpretation and presented in a display of top-notch stagecraft. For students of modern theatre, Aberg’s show should be compulsory viewing.

Dr Faustus’ pact with the Devil is legendary. Having amassed all human knowledge and keen to broaden his horizons yet further, Dr Faustus summons up Lucifer’s demon Mephistophilis. After some hard persuading a deal is struck, Faustus’ veins are cut open and a contract signed in his blood. He is to be given 24 years of superhuman immortal powers on earth, after which his soul will belong to the Devil in eternal damnation. As Faustus is presented with the 7 Deadly Sins and assorted amoral choices, Marlowe’s allegory is clear – that the temptation to evil lies within us all.

In a novel touch, two actors share the leading roles. They enter the stage identically clad and simultaneously strike a match each. He whose match burns out last leaves the stage, to return as Mephistophilis. On press night Oliver Ryan was to play the title role with the lean scot, Sandy Grierson shortly to return shirtless, in an immaculately tailored white suit and in a neat touch, with charred blackened bare feet.

This is a brutal, bloody and above all desperately physical production with Ryan’s Faustus on stage virtually throughout the 1hr 45 one act play. Faustus paints a crude pentagram across the Swan’s black stage to summon the Devil, the bucket of whitewash slopping in his desperation. As the evening unfolds, so does the Doctor become more and more stained by the painted mess that he has created.

Mephistophilis summons up a nightmarish cohort of scholars to confront Faustus on his journey– black clad and hatted and almost suggesting an ensemble of bottle-dancing Jews – and it is in their movement that much of this show’s magic lies. Ayse Tashkiran choreographs his actors with an infernal ingenuity (that at other times hints at the zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video), meanwhile up in the gods (natch) Jonathan Williams six-piece band deliver the classy yet disquieting dischord of Orlando Gough’s musical backdrop with a chilling resonance. The costuming and design (credit Naomi Dawson) is at once simple and grotesque, exemplified best perhaps by Natey Jones’ transvestite manifestation of the deadly sin Lechery. He’s all legs and frock, complete with outrageously kinky heels, though it is Ruth Everett’s Wrath, sporting a wig that’s half black and half white and which offers a troubling suggestion of anger stemming from a psychiatric disorder, which offers up another of this production’s perceptive yet brilliant conceits.

Sandy Grierson and the scholars

Ryan gives his soul to the role as he finds his all-knowing self so knowingly played by Grierson’s perpetually suave and sardonic emissary. It all makes for compelling, unsettling theatre.

Perhaps the most troubling image of all is that of Jade Croot’s Helen Of Troy. This child-woman, with a face that launched a thousand ships, provided by the Devil to satisfy Faustus’ lust, launches her gamine youthfulness at the Doctor. Their passion rises in a whirling embrace, until, spent, her prone body is lifeless in Faustus’ arms as he fast recognises his impending doom. Like much of the play, the moment is both beautiful and terrifying.

Runs in repertoire until 4th August

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks