Fresh from his starry successes with Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse and in the West End with David Tennant and The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre with Ncuti Gatwa, Max Webster turns his attention north and to a less accessible work—Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus at the Royal Shakespeare Company. This time it’s Simon Russell Beale – a star of a slightly different ilk to Tennant and Gatwa – who features as Webster’s star, taking on the titular role.
The notoriously bloody play sees the front row of the RSC’s Swan Theatre supplied with blankets to protect them from splashback, and the programme talks about the lengths the production team has gone to in anticipating an audience’s potential reaction to what happens on stage. There are no fainting spells at today’s matinee performance, though there are plenty of heads bowed, tucked under arms or hidden entirely by those heavy black blankets. You quickly realise how much the television series Game of Thrones owes to Shakespeare.
Titus (Russell Beale) has returned victorious from wars with the Goths bearing their Queen, Tamora (Wendy Kweh), and her entourage as prisoners. Having seen her eldest son sacrificed by Titus to avenge the death of his oldest son, the Queen vows her own revenge. Titus unwittingly provides her with the opportunity by supporting Saturninus’s (Joshua James) claim to Rome’s emperorship over his brother Bassianus (Ned Costello), resulting in Saturninus attempting to marry Titus’s only daughter Lavinia (Letty Thomas) to spite his brother, to whom she is already pledged. The result is Saturninus’s marriage to Tamora and new simmering tensions in Rome that threaten to boil over at any moment.
Russell Beale is on incredible form as Titus, a man so moved by grief from the rape and mutilation of his daughter that he seems to float through the world until he finds purpose in retribution. The ensemble as a whole is on fine form, from Emma Fielding as the gender-swapped Marcia to Natey Jones as the unredeemable Aaron.
Webster updates the setting to generic monochrome modernity and, when it comes to violence, he practically puts us in an abattoir with men hung from the ceiling by their ankles and women who squeal like stuck pigs having had their throats unceremoniously cut. That it resembles a modern slaughterhouse makes it all the more chilling, but the real horrors do not come from the copious amounts of blood spilt – they come from human nature. Suddenly, this lesser-performed play seems timeless – what a wonderful production… if you can stomach it.
Rating: ★★★★★ (Excellent)
