Bloodbath of Shakespearean proportions
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Related subjects: Alex Sharp, Art & Culture, Edinburgh, Exhibits & Critique, Film & Performance, The Fringe Festival, United Kingdom Comments Off
TITUS ANDRONICUS, ACTION TO THE WORD, C VENUE
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Fringe productions of Shakespeare are usually best approached with caution. Everyone wants to have a go and show their mettle, and the temptation to add their own mark to the works by offering a “reinterpretation” often begs for disaster – Hamlet in space, perhaps, or The Tempest re-enacted as a Marxist parable of the evils of modern society. Occasionally it’s a spectacular success, as with the Midsummer-Night’s-Dream-in-a-roller-disco of The Donkey Show, a recent Edinburgh Fringe smash hit that went on to a run in London’s West End and from there to New York. The list of equally spectacular failures stretches on into the middle distance. Cambridge University-born company Action to the Word’s version of Titus Andronicus falls squarely between these two stools, passing the test with, if not a distinction, then enough merit to be shared round the sizeable cast, without ever really breaking any new ground.
Their particular “twist” on the piece is to frame it in a gothic urban setting. In modern dress and squeezed into a running time of 75 minutes, this is an accessible, fast-forwarded highlights package of the epic play. Titus Andronicus, Roman hero and general, returns from a successful campaign against the Goths, bringing as prisoners the Goth queen Tamora and her children. His first task is to settle the dispute between two brothers over who should become the next Emperor of Rome. He chooses Saturnine, who then immediately frees Tamora and makes her his Empress. Titus and his family are made to pay a series of increasingly heavy prices for his harsh treatment of the former Goth prisoners, before the play’s sensationally over-the-top finale.
The company of trained performers make good use of the space, and there are no discernible weak links in the acting, although Tamora is occasionally difficult to hear. In an inventive approach to the rape of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, movement and music are used before she is slung over a shoulder and bundled offstage, later to reappear, naked and trembling, in a shopping trolley. The short running time keeps the production from flagging, the pace always lightning fast. There are some questionable aesthetic uses of the “gothic” motif, with some unnecessarily misogynistic sequences of scantily-clad girls gyrating and grinding, for no particular reason, but on the whole Action to the Word treat the play with respect and no small amount of technical skill. Simple but effective lighting, and a soundtrack featuring Placebo, Billy Corgan, and an unexpected use of Madness’s Driving in My Car, help move things along. This is a good, solid take on Titus Andronicus, allowing the text to come to the fore and do its work, and would make an excellent introduction for those who’ve not yet been acquainted with Shakespeare’s bloodiest early tragedy.
23.00, until 25 August
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