It is not just heads that roll in Shakespeare’s bloodiest drama. Hands and tongues are chopped off and bodies are mutilated until they are mere meat, then cooked and fed to loved ones, as we follow the fortunes of Roman generalTitus (Simon Russell Beale) after a triumphant campaign against the Goths. The killing of his first prisoner and the subsequent marriage of Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Wendy Kweh) to new emperor Saturninus (Joshua James) sets off a circuit of hate-fuelled violence that raises the ante at every turn.
A metal grille around the stage for Max Webster’s production suggests the imminent letting of blood. The first of the horrors – the dismembering of Tamora’s son, limb by limb, even as she begs for mercy – takes place off stage, Greek-style. You hear his screams and the squelch of metal on flesh.
But the blood-letting becomes explicit, and graphic, albeit with a surprising, stylised twist (which should not be given away). Despite the grand guignol, with body pile-ups of Jacobean proportions, the violence never seems gratuitous, and there is no overt sign of sexual degradation after Titus’s daughter, Lavinia (Letty Thomas), is raped.
Russell Beale is subtly sublime, capturing all of Titus’s sides. He is the dutiful, dignified statesman, dressed in civvies rather than military attire, as he cedes the mantle of emperor to Saturninus (excellently arrogant), heroic with hope when he thinks he can save his sons from decapitation, but then the beady-eyed strategist when his tears have run out and he has set upon cold-blooded revenge.
Yet Russell Beale makes him humane, too: he does not kill one son in the early scuffle involving Lavinia, who Saturninus wants to marry even though she is betrothed to his brother and enemy Bassianus (Ned Costello). And he is devastated when he fails to save her from the violence; the scene as father mourns his daughter’s wounds marks a truly tragic point in the play.
Joanna Scotcher’s set and costume design have a similar monochrome starkness to Webster’s recentMacbeth. The blood looks all the redder against it. It is skin-crawlingly creepy when hi-tech torture equipment, suspended from pulleys, is brought on and off the stage. A gothic soundscape is full of nerve-jangling rattles and screams (sound design by Tingying Dong, compositions by Matthew Herbert) but it gets more adrenalised, with added club beats, as the violence amps up.
The modernity of this production – grey trousers and overcoats, frosted glass doors at the back – answers the question of why this play, with all its extravagant horrors, should be performed today. In its look it is reminiscent of contemporary torture chambers – from Bagram to Guantanamo to Syria and Iran. A pit into which bodies are pushed brings the chilling sense of a mass grave. The body parts brought on to the stage in plastic bags and sometimes handed to a horrified parent or sibling are alarmingly reminiscent of current footage from Gaza.
This abject realism switches, in wordless interludes, to a kind of feverish psychological reality in which actors curl up and turn into a dark, growling, choreographed ensemble, snarling and stomping with arms dangling – more like creatures than human beings. When someone dies they resurrect themselves to join this shadow-world which, you realise, is both the manifestation of the animal aspect of humanity but also hauntings that fuel the cycle of revenge.
In spite of its bloodbaths, it is a play that glitters with poetic richness. This presents a strange paradox: such horrors set against such lyricism. On one hand, there are Aaron (Natey Jones)’s articulations of absolute hate. On the other, a melancholy language of sacrifice, suffering and forbearance, as well as Titus’s inquiries into the “reasons for this turmoil”. The futility of the violence is made abundantly clear, as well as the chaos of the hate. It is forthisthat we watchTitus Andronicus, and it is immaculately set against the barbarism.
Occasionally, in the first half, there were poor sight lines with actors blocking the central scene. But in all, this is an awesome production.
At theSwan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 7 June