We open on the Swan Theatre completely transformed from when I last saw it (only a week previously, for Candide), fitted with baroque arches, moody lighting and a distinctly moroccan - certainly foreign - feel. At the beginning of the play the action occurs very quickly. We soon learn that the three body-bags on stage hold the corpses of Titus Andronicus' (a noble general, played by Stephen Boxer) sons, killed in battle. They are buried, and he enacts a vengeful punishment on the son of the queen of the Goths - allowing his remaining living sons to tear him limb from limb. This first act of retribution becomes the fuel for much of the play's subsequent action, Tamora (Katy Stephens), the queen of the goths marrying Saturninus (the deceased emperor's son, who Titus recommends should be made emperor). With her remaining sons Demetrius (Perry Millward) and Chiron (Jonny Weldon), she plots to eventually wreak vengeance on Titus, from her newly elevated position of power. Meanwhile, Titus kills one of his sons for disobeying him (random, I know), and his beautiful daughter Lavinia betrays him by secretly marrying Bassanius, Saturninus' brother. etc, etc. Sorry to run through this so quickly, but it's basically all plot, and we need to get to the juicy bits!
Now we get to the good part. Demetrius and Chiron, Tamora's two foul, ravenously youthful, horny sons are crudely fighting over their respective wishes to 'obtain' fair Lavinia (Rose Reynolds): by obtain, I mean penetrate. Aaron (Kevin Harvey), a Goth moor arrives on the scene, and contrives a plan whereby they will both be gratified. At this stage, it becomes apparent he has 'obtained' their mother, repeatedly. The reason as to why he helps them is vague, but he figures as an essentially darkly mischievous figure, bound to to evil at whatever costs. Harvey is particularly good in this role, at times making the audience laugh (I think his thick scouse accent helps), and - more often than not - repulsing. Whenever Aaron is involved, there is trouble. So, Demetrius and Chiron manage to ensnare newlyweds Lavinia and Bassanius while the rest of the nobles are on a hunt, killing Bassanius and disposing of his body in a neatly contrived hole. Lavinia, devastated at her husband's death, can aptly foresee what is to become of her. Tamora emerges from the trees. Reynolds' pleas to her human empathy, her kindred spirit as a woman &c are deeply affecting. With a studied reticence Stephens presents an unbending Tamora, who by a twisted, depraved logic affirms that if her children have sexual lusts, they must be sated: and why not on Lavinia, a Roman and Titus' daughter. She leaves them to her sons mercy - not without a tiny flicker of hesitance - and departs. Parental authority has disappeared, and youthful urges are given dominance. The effects can only be disastrous...
Meanwhile, Titus' remaining sons accidentally come across Bassanius' body. Aaron's plot works to frame them for his murder, and they are lead away captive by Saturninus. Titus believes his luck cannot be any worse, nor his life any sadder (FYI Titus, you're wrong).
As act II begins (I think, don't quote me), we return to our beautiful damsel. If you happen to have forgot when happens to Lavinia in the play, you're quickly reminded: she is savagely raped, and has her tongue cut out and hands lopped off so she cannot communicate who the perpetrators of the crime were. She is silenced in the bloodiest, and most brutal possible way. The RSC chose to take a graphic approach to this scene, and in some ways, I don't think there is any way to stage such a gross violation 'minimally'. There is a fine line between staging that is reverent of the stories true horror, and gratuitous exhibitionism. Although the audience was visibly and audibly shocked and repulsed by Lavinia's repelling appearance - the two girls sat next to me were very distressed, one burst into tears and could not look at the stage, the other actually wretched - I think that the RSC stays on the side of the reverent. Yes, to look at Lavinia - stumps wrapped in scarlet-stained strands of blond hair, head shorn, clothes torn and bloody, blood spilling from her castrated, muted mouth - is horrible, but it is necessary. We are shown with repugnant accuracy the disastrous consequences of headless, ignorant, rampant, sexualised youth run amok. For a split-second, as Demetrius and Chiron stood gloating, gorged, wielding knifes with the husked shell of a woman at their feet, I was reminded of the horrific case of Jamie Bulger, the beautifully innocent infant tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old's in 1993. Obviously, Demetrius and Chiron are historically older than Thompson and Venables, and there is no real, honourable way to compare fiction and reality, but I instantly felt a disgust at the sheer destructive power of unchecked, unguided, hedonistic, sadistic youth - the same disgust I felt when hearing about the Bulger case a couple of years ago. It is uncannily strange and completely disturbing to realise that issues that clearly concerned Shakespeare and motivated his writing are still horribly relevant today. Sorry for that digression, but it felt important to share.
Demetrius and Chiron flee, leaving Lavinia in her sorry state. Although I of course recognised Lavinia as a damaged, dejected, violated - near animal - creature, I'm happy to say that the sheer skill and beauty of Reynolds' acting managed to convey something else too: Lavinia's undeniable, un-thwartable strength. Lavinia hides her face for shame as she encounters different characters, her uncle Marcus (the ever astute, faultless Richard Durden), and her woeful father, yet I argue that she is not completely hopeless. Demetrius and Chiron's' aim was to silence her, but Reynolds insistent, continuous noise - in the form of tounge-less moans and grumbles - as other characters lament her situation around her, or a la Titus, proffer to speak for her, completely negates their sick objective. Yes, she's not coherent, but she is not silent, never silent. It may be just that I want to read this into the performance, but I think this subtle, small detail diffuses some (but definitely not all) of the feminist claims against 'Titus Andronicus' misogynist agenda. Maybe in an eighteenth century performance Lavinia might have been mute, but in 2013 she strives to reclaim the voice unlawfully snatched from her, to undo the violation of the young, male hand.
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| Rose Reynolds as Lavinia |
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| Reynolds and Boxer |
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| Tamora as 'revenge' |
But whatever happened to Titus' remaining sons, imprisoned by Saturninus? Aaron emerges on the scene with a sick bargain from Saturninus (a bargain that does not exist): the sons will be restored in return for one human hand. Marcus, Titus and Lucius - in an extremely touching, and nonetheless comic moment - all willingly offer up their hands, squabbling over who should be the one to redeem the sons while Aaron watches with a wry smile. Titus eventually fulfils the sick task (sending Marcus and Lucius away so he can do it). Later, a 'gift' from Saturninus, a pram-full of the sons bloody, dismembered body-parts, is wheeled on stage. Their two heads are thwacked on the floor with a sickeningly realistic thud, the blood and matter clinging to the flimsy plastic. The symbolism of this image was not lost on me (extremely thoughtful staging by Fentiman); the sons, so cherished and loved, are returned in a baby's carriage that subtly incenses Titus' paternal woe, and intensifies our sense of injustice. Titus' severed hand is also returned to, and he is uncannily, comically, heart-wrenchingly, able to shake hands with himself.
As the woe of the play reaches its crescendo, Boxer comes into his own. Titus' soliloquies are perfectly delivered, blending anger and sorrow, evincing pathos and outrage in the viewer. As the play has progressed we have observed him transform from brutal, honour-obsessed murderer (killing his own son in the first act), to pliable, human father. As woe is heaped on woe, he consistently oscillates between sinking into and luxuriating in his despair, and railing against it. As any theatregoer - or film or TV-watcher - will tell you, however, the gut-lead reaction against despair unfortunately has the tendency to propagate further disaster. What is our instinctual reaction to pain? Revenge.
Gradually, the plot bubbles on; Marcus helps Lavinia name her killers (finally, the pressure of the dramatic irony upon the audience is relieved - at times I wanted to shout out their names to Titus for her!), and Lucius is sent to summon a Goth army. In the meantime, Tamora gives birth to her child. Surprise surprise, it's Aaron, the Moor's. Shakespeare has the wonderful knack of making his secondary plots reflect the larger 'main' plot, and be sources of intrigue in and of themselves. Here we see Aaron - an essentially rouge, villainous, heartless character - almost palpably melt as he realises the great responsibility thrust upon him (with his son's birth) and awakens to the possibility of genuine, un-lascivious, incomparable love. The play opened with a man mourning the loss of his sons killed in battle, its entire action is propelled by Tamora's pain of witnessing her son ripped to pieces, and Titus' revenge is prompted by the deaths and violations of his sons and daughter respectively. Familial love, more exactly the love a parent feels for their child, is highlighted by Shakespeare as the main motivation of any action. As we witness Aaron kill the messenger and plot to kill the midwife present at his babe's birth (who could, he reasons, tell people about it's illegitimacy and so write it's death-sentence), we see the extreme (and violent of course, it is 'Titus Andronicus' for heaven's sake) ends a father will go to to protect his child. Although in 'Titus', the forms protection adopts - killing, torture, betrayal - are inherently, objectively bad, the motivation is, arguably, from the best, most sacred place: the heart. Ends don't justify means, but means do mean something.
Back to the 'rape' plot. Tamora now knows (through some messages) that Titus knows who raped his daughter - it's a whole web of knowing - and decides she's going to trick the old man in his sorrowful 'madness' by showing up at his house, disguised in a wolfs hide, pretending to be the embodiment of 'revenge' (with her accomplices Demetrius and Chiron, Rapine and Murder). In this scene, dark as it is, there is indubitable humous as Titus pretends to be mad and believe Tamora is revenge, and the characters interact beautifully - their exchanges swathed in layers of irony and black comedy.
Tamora departs, and the mood quickly turns from comedy to horror as Titus reveals the extent of his own horrible 'knowledge', wreaking his revenge on the two defenceless, gruesome brothers (still in their silly disguises). Titus' binding of Demetrius and Chiron and letting of their blood as they hang suspended from the rafters (Lavinia collecting their blood in a bowl), is simultaneously a marvellous technical feat (the staging, set and costume excels throughout), and a spectacle that inspires outrage in the audience. Although shocking, I once more hasten to say that this scene is not gratuitous. Arguably, the tenor of the visual spectacle must match the tenor of Shakespeare's keen verse: if Titus is proclaiming that he will let their blood and mash their bones into a paste to feed to their mother, he can't simply strangle them silently. What they did was animalistic, and they are killed like animals. Their suspended figures, slowly lifted up, aptly mirror the raising of the corpses to the Andronicus family vault first scene of the play: Tamora's children rise up, bloody and defamed - their legacy the obliteration of a human life (Lavinia's) - the hateful counterpart of Titus' noble sons, killed and famed in battle. Respectful/depraved, Roman/Goth. In Titus Andronicus, things occur in circles. Right or wrong, Demetrius and Chiron's bodies balance and lead back to those of the first fallen sons.
Now we reach the dramatic catastrophie, and you can betcha, there will be blood. Fentiman et al put a comic twist on the dinner scene, dressing (the ostensibly) 'mad' Titus in a french-maid's outfit to serve up the grisly supper. But things only get darker from here. Titus, in his 'insanity' asks Saturninus if a father should kill his daughter if she has been raped. Saturninus replies yes, to put her out of her misery. Now, I haven't read 'Titus Andronicus '(I knew it only from extracts and allusions), and so Titus' sudden and almost unbelievable, painful, prolonged smothering of the struggling and resisting Lavinia came as a brutal shock to me - and a lot of the audience members. I guess this is why so many people find this play problematic. We believe that Titus loves his daughter, truly, deeply loves her. So why does he kill her? To prove a point to Saturninus, and reveal the rape - treating her more as a symbol than a person? To abolish her shame? To send her to heaven, and put her out of her misery? To show he is the dominant patriarch? I really, really don't believe it's the last one. There is a pathos in Boxer's performance, even, paradoxically, as he suffocates his child. When death is immanent, I can't help thinking, isn't it better to be killed by someone who loves you?
Even in death Lavinia cannot be silenced.
Titus is on a roll now, informing Tamora that the pie she has just consumed is composed of the blood and bones of her own sons. Titus has achieved the ultimate revenge, and simultaneously committed the gravest crime. Villain in himself or no, I couldn't help feeling sorry, and kind of pleased for him as he sinks into the glorious oblivion of the bloodbath that ensues (practically everyone is killed). Again, accusations of gratuitousness are likely to arise here. Although spurting fake-blood can seem amateurish, and remind one distinctly of messy Halloween's past, the argument of gratuity seems pointless now. The entire play, from the first second, has been characterised and coloured by gore - so how else could it finish?
Arguably, this end is not so acutely or cuttingly horrible (for that moment, see Lavinia's rape), and it feels kind of anticlimactic (not gratuitous, anticlimactic) as if, like Titus, we have seen so much that we cannot possibly feel or respond to any more. As there are no more tears, there are no more outraged gasps. Not sensitised exactly, we begin to view such spectacle with a horror-worn eye - still moved, but dangerously, frightening, less responsive. This is how the visual arts work. This is why we have Saw III and V and infinite. Nothing is enough, more so in 2013 than any other era. Yet if we are less than ruptured in the final act, it is not because we can't feel as a generation anymore - we were moved by the rape, weren't we - but because as a play audience, in the finite space and time of the performance, in that and to that particular world, we have become apathetic. 'Titus Andronicus' takes us on a journey of the different types of horror that is very much its own.
I lied when I said this was the end. It's not the end. We return to Aaron, his punishment (enacted by Lucius for the betrayal of Titus' family) is to be buried in the ground with only his head exposed, left to rant (and starve), at will. Aaron rails against life, and vows that if he could go back and live again he would commit 1000 such villainies with gusto; rape, pillage, murder, betray - the focal depravities of the play's plot and main characters' downfalls'. The irrepressible Aaron is only silenced when the young Lucius enters the stage, holding his baby. Two members of the next generation of Romans and Goths. Lucius brandishes the baby in one hand, and a small shovel in the other - holding it up, sparkling, to the light. This moment is beautifully ambivalent; will he nurture the child, or destroy it. The audience, along with Aaron, gaze in awe: if our response to horror has dulled, our reaction to intrigue has not. In this moment we get an overwhelming sense that the fate of the next generation lies in this moment of cure or kill; the Romans and Goths can form a relationship of mutual respect and distance, or they can continue down the involved, brutal path that has engendered a seemingly endless cycle of childrens' deaths and parental revenge. If Aaron's boy is killed there will be no father to avenge it. So will the cycle stop either way? This is something we simply do not know.
The RSC's 'Titus Andronicus' was a tour de force of both old and young acting talent, with Reynolds flying the flag for the girls, and Boxer upholding that of the men. If you see one play this autumn, make it Titus Andronicus. Set your stomach, hold your nerves, and brace yourself for an unforgettable evening of blood and beauty.
*****
