Titus Andronicus

Bell Shakespeare waited 30 years to stage Shakespeare’s early Roman tragedy. It’s a horrifically violent carnival of revenge, his reportedly blood-thirsty attempt to outmatch Marlowe, and please the Elizabethans in the pit – who loved it.  Myself, I could have waited another 30 years.

Titus returns to Rome with Tamora, the conquered Queen of the Goths and her sons, with the oldest dispatched in the first minutes as Titus’ revenge for his own 21 sons lost in battle.  And so the cycle begins, hands chopped off, his daughter raped and mutilated, the imperial family slaughtered and, finally, Tamora’s remaining children served up to her baked into a pie.

With stuff like this, director Adena Jacobs apes the mastery of Tarantino in playfully dividing the action into titled chapters.  But in this wash of blood, Shakespeare has already squeezed out much wordy reflection and dramatic purpose, and there’s even less in this edited version. 

Across an open stage, designer Eugyeene Teh dresses each horrorscope with a surreal collection of singular objects, notably statues of children knocked over like skittles, old medical equipment, a scary cabin and a litter of human remains. 

Thanks to an uneven cast and a diffused focus under Verity Hampson’s shadowy lights, storytelling is further sacrificed to assembling such images.  With on-stage camera work and a gurgling oesophageal examination projected behind, this Titus is more static art installation (if occasionally striking) than a theatre experience grabbing you by the throat.

Jane Montgomery Griffiths as Titus is an exception. She’s both brawny warrior and bare breasted matriarch, with an impressive vocal variety increasingly stretched by insanity. Melita Jurisic is also imposing as Tamora and Daniel Schlusser as Emporer Saturninus. Tony Ray Ray and Grace Truman are effecting children, their innocence soon bled from them, while Max Lyandvert’s sound screams for our attention between the chapters.  Jacobs’ images do linger, but little does of this play of chaos stripped to such bones.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Brett Boardman