In a dark and dusty, largely underrated and under-read corner of the Shakespearean canon we find Titus Andronicus. Titus is a messy play. It seems fitting that by quarter past eleven on opening night the stage is heaped with dead bodies, littered with bits of bread, jam, sand, fake blood and spit. A raucous cackle marks the close of what has been deeply disturbing. “Why dost thou laugh?”, we, like Marcus (Robert Aird), might ask. The performance is intelligent yet, at points, doesn’t shy from a lack of sincerity; how can one sever off a hand on stage without the aid of a gloriously unsubtle papier mache prop?

The audience laughs as fake blood abounds, but in the deftly quiet moments of the play we are also uncomfortable, frightened even. The production confronts us with heinous acts of violence yet, the “heart suspects more than the eye can see”, and much of what is most unsettling is unsettling because we don’t see it take place. We laugh, Aaron (Adam Kirton) laughs, because we feel awkward, because we seek reassurance, but also because we are indulging in this copious massacre.

In the intimate Judith E Wilson Drama Studio the mechanics of theatre are laid bare and exploited by a cast which shows both flashes of brilliance, but also absurdity (often simultaneously). The space created is curiously post-Ovidian-pre-Artaudian, and presided over by a violin soloist whose very musicality is jarring in such a fragmentary, disembodying production. Tamora (Rose Paine), a once captive Goth turned devilish femme fatal, is set against Lavinia (Freddie Poulton), a woman whose timidity and strength are inextricably bound up in her voicelessness. We navigate through this play at the behest of the signs and images these women create and eventually become, as they misuse, lose and reinvent language.

For three and a half hours, a malevolent laugh and a violated cry sound at once the same; the conventional edifice of theatre is as broken as the dead who lie upon its floo. The violence becomes so visceral that it transforms into something else, something both ugly and funny and yet srangely compelling. I have to give four stars to this production for embracing the untidyness in this play, for brave performances, for imaginative, creative direction and for understanding that Titus Andronicus is just as provocative and important as its more popular counterparts.