by It is not just heads that roll in Shakespeare’s bloodiest drama. Hands and tongues are chopped off and bodies are mutilated until they are only meat, then cooked and fed to the relatives, while after a triumphant campaign against the Goths we follow the assets of the Roman General Titus (Simon Russell Beale). The murder of his first prisoner and the subsequent marriage of Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Wendy Kweh) with the new Emperor Saturninus (Joshua James) exhibits a circle of hate contracts that increases the operation at any time.
A metal grille on the stage for the production of Max Webster indicates the upcoming blood pourion. The first of the horror of Tamora’s son Limb by Limb, even if it is asking for mercy-outside the stage in the Greek style. You listen to his screams and the whip made of metal on meat.
But the bloodshed becomes explicitly and graphically, albeit with a surprising, stylized turn (which should not be given away). Despite the Grand Guignol, the violence with body piles of Jakobean proportions never seems free of charge, and there is no open sign of sexual deterioration after Titus’ daughter Lavinia (Letty Thomas) has been raped.
Russell Beale is subtly sublime and captures all sides of Titus. He is the dutiful, worthy statesman who is dressed in civilian clothing rather than military clothing than he gives the emperor’s coat in Saturninus (excellently arrogant).
But Russell Beale also makes him human: he does not kill a son in the early brawl with Lavinia, who wants to marry Saturninus, even though she is engaged to his brother and enemy Bassianus (Ned Costello). And he is destroyed if he cannot save it from violence; The scene, when his daughter’s wounds mourned, marks a really tragic point in the play.
Joanna Scotcher’s set and costume design have a similar monochrome Starkness like Websters youngest Macbeth. The whole Redder looks like the blood. It is creepy when hi-tech torture devices that are hung on straps are brought to the stage and brought off the stage. A Gothic sound landscape is full of nerve-wracking rattles and screaming (sound design of Dong, compositions by Matthew Herbert), but it is more adrenalized, with additional club strokes, such as violence.
The modernity of this production – gray pants and coats, frosted glass doors on the back – answers the question of why this piece should be listed today with all its extravagant horrors. In its appearance, it reminds of contemporary torture chambers – from Bagram via Guantanamo to Syria and Iran. A pit that bodies are pushed brings the terrifying feeling of a mass grave. The parts of the body that are brought to the stage in plastic bags and sometimes handed over to a horrified parent or siblings are alarming with current footage from Gaza.
This bitter realism changes in wordless interludes to a kind of febrile psychological reality in which actors roll together and turn into a dark, growling, choreographed ensemble, with poor snakes and stamping – more like creatures than humans. When someone dies, he stands out again to join this shadow world, which, as you can see, both the manifestation of the animal aspect of mankind as well as persecutes the cycle of revenge.
Despite its blood baths, it is a piece that glitters from poetic wealth. This shows a strange paradox: such horrors against such poetry. On the one hand, the articulations of Aaron (Natey Jones) are available from absolute hatred. On the other hand, a melancholy language of the victim, suffering and fortune as well as Titus’ inquiries about the “reasons for this turbulence”. The senselessness of violence becomes very clear as well as the chaos of hate. It’s for The That we watch Titus Andronicus and violate barbarism.
Occasionally there were poor visual lines with actors in the first half that blocked the central scene. But overall, this is a great production.
• In the Swan Theater, Stratford-Upon-Avon, until June 7th
