Today’s performance of Titus Andronicus was stellar. It was the first time I’d ever seen Titus performed and I definitely was impressed with the show. I saw Twelfth Night in the Festival last night and was pleased, but there is something about the intimacy of the Tom Patterson that makes its shows seem more personal. I bought a rush ticket for today’s show, picking a seat in the second row. Luckily, though, those in front of me were moved to front row center seats and I was able to take one of their seats in the front row. I was far to the back of the stage, but in a theater like Tom Patterson I really don’t think such things matter much. I was right next to the actors the whole time, whereas in the Festival I had a balcony seat, which was still a great seat in my opinion, but today’s seating arrangement was still much better.
I had never seen Titus performed before, either on film or on stage, and it had been years since I read the play, so this morning I bought myself an Oxford copy of the text and spent some time by the Avon River reading the first two acts. Looking back, I am not entirely sure that I actually finished the play the previous time I read it; one of its scenes at the end took me by surprise today. It’s actually nice when that happens, though, to be able to see things fresh for the first time, to come to a performance without preconceived notions or expectations. That likely tainted to some degree my opinions last night of Twelfth Night. I know I came to that play with a lot of baggage, it being one of my favorites, and having seen it previously three times on stage, and that made it hard for last night’s performance to satisfy me. It’s a sort of loss of innocence.
I think part of my issue too with last night’s performance, though, is that I am a traditionalist – I am not a fan usually of modern dress performances or highly eclectic mixes of styles – and I almost always prefer a simple staging of a play that gives the appearance of how Shakespeare might have been performed in the past. I realize that Peter Brooks would likely want nothing to do with such renditions, and I understand the argument that such performances lack originality and fully understand all of those criticisms, but regardless there is something inside me that greatly enjoys a performance done in a simple, consistent and historical costuming. Yesterday’s Twelfth Night did not attempt to do that, but this afternoon’s performance of Titus did. Romans were dressed like Romans, or at least how I perceive Romans likely dressed, and the Goths were distinctly different in costume, in much earthier colors and rugged skins. As I got lost in the action of the play, I felt like I could very well be sitting in on a performance that could just as easily have been staged a century ago, or even four. It’s like traveling through time.
Another interesting note on the costuming of the play was oftentimes the absence of it. While the characters were always covered just enough, from the very beginning of the play the amount of skin shown took me by surprise. At the opening of the play, a cart is wheeled in carrying the bodies of two of Titus’s slain sons. After they are carried away and buried, a cloth is pulled from the cart revealing a cage below containing the nearly nude bodies of Tamora, her three sons, and Aaron. Their bodies were dirty and exposed. The effect made them seem vulnerable. There seemed a lot of flesh flashed and shown in this performance. A sign outside warned that this performance would include extreme violence and sexual situations.
I was also impressed with the theme of brotherhood in the play. It seems as though there are brothers everywhere in the play. I could probably write an entire essay about the theme of brotherhood in the play; I’m sure it’s likely already been done several times before already, though. I would probably know of at least twelve such essays if I were more familiar with this play.
The performance included some bizarre and very dark humor at times. For such a dark play, it seems hard to imagine the audience ever laughing, but we did. Demetrius and Chiron were so stupid and foolish in their vileness, that if the situation were different we might have thought them clowns and laughed, though nobody actually did in this case. At one point in the opening scene, they were released from the cage and made to kneel near Lavinia, and they reached out their fingers to try lustily to touch her foot. It was funny in a morbid and disgusting way, not the type of funny that makes people laugh, though. In the scene where they fight with one another over Lavinia, they pick and poke at each other in a way almost resembling the Three Stooges, pulling hair and twisting nipples. One of the brothers made sexual motions atop the other while the other screamed as a woman. They laughed, but we didn’t. These weren’t what I meant when I talked about the parts where we laughed. It was Titus, who made us laugh at one point. As his hand was about to be cut off by Aaron, he pulled it back – his right hand – and changed his mind, his indecision leading us to laugh. He then indicated he would have his left cut off instead. He made us laugh a second time when he asked Aaron to pin his wrist down with one hand, while holding an axe with the other. Don’t think, though, that the scene was not horrific. These brief moments of laughter were squeezed into what was otherwise a horrific scene. It was perhaps the most troubling for the audience of all the scenes, as what I remember most was not on stage, but in the first row of the audience just across me. A woman in purple sat there and kept her face covered with her hands for much of the scene unwilling to watch. Interestingly, after the intermission a few minutes later, she didn’t come back. She needn’t have covered her face, though; the lights went to black in the moment that Aaron chopped off Titus’s hands. The production handled all of the moments of violence with a blast of a trumpet and drowning us in darkness. The effect was simple, but worked. At times, I even didn’t want to watch. I would like to have spoken with the lady in purple who left the theater after intermission; I wonder if the material was just too violent for her.
Towards the end of the play, Tamora plays the part of Revenge and comes on with her two sons, who play Murder and Rape. I couldn’t recognize them at first beneath their costumes. They were in red and had long sticks under their robes that gave them the impression of having unnaturally long arms, which the used to make grand gestures and move delicately around the stage. They had claws at the end of their arms and seemed like birds. It is this scene that made me question whether I had ever finished the play previously because I could not remember it at all. It was not until Titus began to reference their similarity in appearance to Tamora and her sons that I realized what was happening.
The ending of the play also struck me. Young Lucius was played by a child of about ten years old; he seemed so small and innocent on the stage throughout the play. In the last scene, though, it is this child who makes the killing blow upon Saturninus. He stabs him repeatedly in the chest again and again while his uncle holds Saturtinus arms behind his back. He smiled and seemed to enjoy the killing. The boy playing the role wasn’t a particularly great actor, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen somebody so young on stage who I would say was that good. Throughout the whole play, though, he had been mild mannered and almost emotionless in his lines. In this moment, though, in this killing moment he smiled and laughed and reveled in the murder. I am not sure if the director intended this, but it was haunting. There was a perverse pleasure in the murder, in this killing, as the need for revenge is passed on to another generation. It’s a haunting statement about revenge, the way it can never be quelled, that is later echoed in Romeo and Juliet. The thought of that little boy stabbing with his knife is perhaps the moment of the production that I’ll have the most trouble with.
The play is also inconclusive about what happens to Aaron’s baby son. Thinking about the baby too is problematic, and there is a theme about what we are to do with the youth when revenge and villainy grip their elders. I don’t know of anything myself in the text that indicates how to handle the baby’s last scene, but the little African American doll is taken off stage by Lucius. He wipes its brow with some water, and carries it off stage tenderly, leaving the possibility that the baby will be spared. It leaves an interesting dilemma, because if youth can be expected in the performance to revenge on behalf of their grandfathers and fathers, then what is eventually to become of this little baby Aaron. Overall, Aaron was a fascinating character. The dichotomy between him as villain and father was amazing. Throughout the whole play, he played the paramount villain, almost comic bookish in his anger and hate. He paralleled Iago. But when he held that baby in his arms, the audience sighed and didn’t know how to feel. And for a split moment, we didn’t want him hung or executed, because that little tiny baby needed him, and he seemed to need the baby. It was almost like the baby changed his father when it was in his arms. Aaron held him so tenderly, even fighting off Tamora’s sons with one arm while holding his son in the other. When watching one side of Aaron, it was hard to imagine the other; he seemed such a split personality.
This was a great performance of Titus, and not just because I liked my seat and the theater better. It really grabbed the language of the play and thrust its violence into the audience; it made us gasp and look away. It’s a revenge tragedy. Its bloody and violent and sexual. It was a powerful piece. I’m tonight going to see if I can get a rush ticket still for Camelot. If I can, I’ll go, otherwise I’ll take off shortly here for Cambridge and Boston.
