Titus Andronicus
Action to the Word
C Venues, 11 pm.
Three Stars

Action to the Word’s ‘Shakespeare Shorts’ was innovative, witty, and most importantly it worked. Their production of ‘Titus Andronicus’ tried to take the same path, finding an alternative angle on a classic, if rather under-performed, Shakespearean tragedy. The problem with the performance – and it seems appropriate to start with the problem, given the weak opening scene – was the gap between the direction and performance, the idea and the execution. The play brimmed over with innovative and interesting ideas, but these were never fully assimilated into the fabric of the play itself, leaving moments of contemporaneous relevance colliding uncomfortably with scenes containing no such reference.

After the rape of Lavinia by the sons of Tamora, the queen of the Goths who has married Rome’s emperor, the rapists bring the now tongue- and hand-less body of Lavi nia onto the stage in a supermarket trolley, accompanied by ‘I’ve been driving in my car’. The effect was extremely powerful, an image of inconceivable twenty-first century barbarity to whose grossness the audience was deafened – quite literally – by the music. It’s hard to feel pity to the tune of Madness, trapping the audience in a sense of guilty shame. But then the music stopped, the scene began and this effect evaporated, only present as an accompaniment to getting the body on stage and as a brief illustration of the moral dilemmas present in the play. The characters’ words were left to speak for themselves – which, being Shakespeare’s, they did admirably – but not without a sense of disjunction.

The production was however, a powerful one; I do not intend to be patronising when I say that the ideas themselves were good ones. The scenes between Marcus Andronicus and the raped Lavinia were deeply moving, as was the deterioration of Titus’ mental state and his control over the play’s movements. But this production was ultimately, compared to the brilliant ‘Shakespeare Sho rts’, a frustrating one.

On until 25 August.

Toby Chadd