The place where lost socks go...

Yesterday evening, my beloved cheshcat and I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest production of Titus Andronicus, in the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was..... surprisingly good.

Not being one for mutilation and gore, I have avoided this play for years. Shakespeare's first tragedy is also his bloodiest by far. As S. Clarke Hulse of the University of Illinois at Chicago has noted, this play contains:

14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3 depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of cannibalism – an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines.

It is not uncommon for the Bard's plays to include a high body count -- witness Hamlet or Richard III as examples of other works where nearly everybody dies. However, in Richard III, it is only Richard himself who dies on stage; all the other murders are committed beyond our sight. Hamlet does have five killings in view of the audience, but they are fairly clean and relatively bloodless. Indeed, most of the five occur by poisoning. Also, as far as I can recall, Titus Andronicus is the only Shakespearean play that contains a rape.[*]

Ah well. At least nobody gets their eyes gouged out!

It is only now -- when I am close to completing my goal of seeing all of the Bard's thirty-eight extant plays performed live on stage -- that I decided to relent and finally watch a production of Titus Andronicus. When the RSC included it in their summer repertoire, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to get this one out of the way attend.

On Monday evening, we drove up to Stratford to see a production of A Mad World, My Masters in the RSC's Swan Theatre. Written by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Thomas Middleton, the play is a bawdy romp that delivers up a laugh a minute -- sometimes more! Tis one of the smuttiest, filthiest works of drama to come out of the English Renaissance.

On Tuesday evening -- one day later -- we returned to see Titus Andronicus produced on the same stage with [mostly] the same cast.[**] But the tone and content of these works could not be more different. Seeing them on consecutive days was nearly enough to give me dramatical whiplash!

That said, I am rather glad that we did see this production. The play is remarkably intense, and the performance was exquisite. The director, Michael Fentiman, did not resort to symbolism to soften the impact of the atrocities committed in the play -- for instance, using red streamers instead of blood, as some productions have done. Nor did he go to the other extreme, embellishing upon the violence already inherent in the text. Murder, rape, severed heads, and severed limbs were all to be seen -- with plenty of blood to go around -- but it was done discretely enough so as to not turn the stomach.

My one complaint about this production was that I thought Lavinia too passive a character after being raped and mutilated by Chiron and Demetrius. This was clearly a deliberate choice made by either the director or the actress. Certainly once she loses her tongue, Lavinia can no longer speak. Yet I would have preferred her to remain more engaged and more responsive, in spite of her enforced silence.

Some years ago, I saw a production of Cymbeline performed amongst the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. Watching one of the Bard's final comedies, there were obvious echoes of earlier works, as Shakespeare recycled many of his plot devices (and plots) in Cymbeline -- you have the sleeping potion that creates a death-like state (a la Romeo & Juliet), you have a villain falsely persuading a husband that his wife has been unfaithful (Othello), and you have the damsel in distress solve her problems by dressing up as a boy (Twelfth Night and As You Like It).

I had a similar experience with Titus Andronicus. Watching one of the Bard's first tragedies, there was significant foreshadowing of plays to come. Tamora ruthlessly urging on her husband, the Emperor Saturninus, bears a striking resemblance to scenes with Lady MacBeth and her husband. The insidiously deceptive Aaron seemed a racially inverted version of Othello's Iago, causing havoc for the sheer fun of bringing misery to others. The interaction between Titus and Tamora was strongly reminiscent of that between Richard III and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville. In both cases, we have an ambitious woman dominating her husband -- an emperor or king -- to advance herself and her children to the detriment of all around them. And, of course, it would be impossible to escape the parallels between the father/daughter pairs of Titus/Lavinia and Lear/Cordelia. Both evoke great tenderness and great pathos, with fathers enduring (or feigning) madness and eventually grieving the tragic and senseless loss of their daughter before perishing themselves.

Actually, I am rather pleased that I postponed Titus Andronicus for so long. For, having seen nearly all the other plays already, I can properly appreciate these many parallels. Overall, this was a fantastic performance, and I enjoyed the play far more than I had expected!

I have now seen thirty-six of the Bard's plays performed live on stage. Only two to go! We already have tickets to see Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse in December[***]; now I need to track down a production of Pericles to complete the set!

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ETA: Y'all should be proud of me. I made it all the way through a post about Titus Andronicus without making a single joke about pies...

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[*] The Rape of Lucrece is clearly another Shakespearean work that includes a rape. However, it is a narrative poem and not a play and, thus, does not figure into this count.

[**] Indeed, Tuesday night was certainly a cheerful one for the Royal Shakespeare Company. With Hamlet playing on their main stage and Titus Andronicus in the Swan, twas barely a survivor to be found! I teased an usher, saying they should re-open their old Courtyard Theatre allowing them to play Richard III or MacBeth concurrently with these two!

[***] We were very lucky to get these! Although the run is two months long, the Donmar Warehouse is a Big London Theatre with a small capacity -- only 250 seats. The tickets went on sale to the public last week... and the entire production sold out in under half an hour! Thankfully, I was online with mouse at the ready when the booking opened at 09:00.

Many thanks to all who replied to my previous entry about choosing a Bible. I've not replied to any comments yet, as I wanted to watch the opinions pour in without influencing them in any way. A follow-up entry is forthcoming, which will be a collective response to all the excellent recommendations that you have made, my dear friends.

Meanwhile, I am off to bed fairly soon. I just returned to Chiron Beta Prime a short while ago after a spiffy weekend in London with my beloved cheshcat. Whilst there, we got to spend time with nw1, and also with the ever-awesome due of D&J.[*] In addition to seeing these three friends, we also saw three plays -- all by the Bard, and all ones that we had not seen before.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre to see a theatre company called Perfect Shadow Mingled Yarn perform what they call "Shakespeare's Bookends". The "bookends" are Shakespeare's first and last play[**] -- "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Two Noble Kinsmen" -- performed by the same cast. These two plays have very similar plots, and the actors were cast accordingly, with corresponding roles. We saw the Kinsmen as a matinée and the Gentlemen in the evening.

Whilst enjoyable, these two productions were clearly the work of an amateur company working in a black box theatre. Happily, a professional company in Bristol -- Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory -- will be producing the "Two Gentlemen" next Spring. I have already noted the day that tickets go on sale; it will be good to see this again, performed by a more professional cast.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the National Theatre to see Simon Russell Beale star as the eponymous character in "Timon of Athens". In contrast to Saturday, this was most definitely a Big Budget^TM production, and they did an excellent job with the text. I particularly enjoyed the first act, though the second left me unable to shake the feeling that Timon was a second rate Lear. This is no fault of the actors or director; I think tis inherent in the text itself. Considering that this is one of the least well known Shakespeare plays, it was gratifying to see that the National was completely packed! I was, however, slightly baffled at the overwhelmingly thunderous applause at the end of the performance. The show was good, but not that good! I have seen far better performances of plays that did not receive nearly as much noise at the curtain call.

With these three shows ticked off the list, cheshcat and I have but three more remaining before we have see all of the Bard's extant plays performed live on stage. We have also seen a recreation of his "lost play", "Cardenio", as well as a theatrical adaptation of one of his narrative poems: "The Rape of Lucrece". Whilst both were excellent -- and I would happily see an adaptation of his other narrative play, "Venus and Adonis" -- I am only counting the thirty-eight surviving plays in my goal to see performances of all the Bard's theatrical work.

Thirty-five down; three to go! Exciting! What's left? In alphabetical order, we still need to see "Coriolanus", "Pericles", and "Titus Andronicus".

We already know that the Royal Shakespeare Company will be producing "Titus" in 2013, and I shall be buying tickets as soon as they go on sale in a fortnight. That leaves two more shows to track down. It was always my goal to have "Titus" be the final Shakespeare play that I see; the upcoming RSC performance ups the urgency of finding the other two. I might need a little luck with that, as neither is commonly produced!

Right. On that note, tis off to bed with me! Much busy-ness ahead in the coming week, my friends! Stay tuned, gentle readers, to hear more!

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[*] Hurm. Come to think of it, both social encounters were with fellow US American expatriates that we have known from when we all lived Stateside. That wasn't planned; just an amusing coincidence.

[**] Understanding that it is difficult to determine a precise chronology of Shakespeare's plays, it is generally considered that the Gentlemen came first and the Kinsmen came last. See here, for instance.