/ 31 March 1995

Titus topples into the relevant pit 20

Director Gregory Doran has produced a travesty of=20 Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy in his attempt to root the=20 play in South African militarism, argues Digby Ricci=20

FIRST acted and printed in 1594, Titus Andronicus is=20 regarded as Shakespeare’s earliest and bloodiest=20 tragedy, and, although immensely popular with=20 Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, it has subsequently=20 been savaged by critics from Dr Johnson to TS Eliot.=20

Such critical contempt has never been shared by those=20 who have actually presented the play in the theatre.=20 Peter Brook, whose 1955 production is still regarded as=20 one of the finest Shakespearean productions ever, once=20 expressed bewilderment that he had been hailed as the=20 triumphant creator of a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.=20 The equally innovative director, Deborah Warner, has=20 expressed similar sentiments.=20

It is particularly surprising that Eliot, who was so=20 perceptive about the “savage farce” in Christopher=20 Marlowe’s underrated Jew of Malta, could fail to praise=20 the terrifying element of macabre comedy in Titus=20 Andronicus. The play is a searing indictment of the=20 revenge ethic, and depicts the brutalities enacted in=20 the name of honour in terms that run the gamut from=20 lofty tragedy to the grimmest humour.=20

The Rome of Titus Andronicus is a “wilderness of tigers”=20 and, in such a predatory world, victors are unsparing in=20 conquest, and the conquered are rendered pitiful and=20 grotesque by defeat. Titus’ ghastly laughter when=20 confronted with the heads of two of his sons (“I have=20 not another tear to shed”) has a Beckettian quality: he=20 is trapped in a society which human blindness and=20 brutality have made both nightmarish and ludicrous. =20

Aaron, “the coal-black Moor”, is an amused and=20 horrifyingly amusing Machiavel, in the style of Richard=20 III and Marlowe’s Barabas, one whose ingenious=20 contrivances invite a reluctantly grinning admiration,=20 and whose single act of decency (his refusal to kill his=20 “calf”), leads to his downfall. There is gallows humour=20 too in Titus’ demented shifts from wisdom and compassion=20 to enraged vengefulness — the fly-sparing-then-killing=20 scene is the most obvious example.=20

In addition to such a potent, avant- garde blend of=20 humour and nightmare, Titus offers a bleakly accurate=20 political vision that never falls into the trap of=20 accepting what Bertrand Russell once scathingly dubbed=20 “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed”. =20

Mercilessly conquered, Tamora, Queen of the Goths,=20 enacts a more merciless revenge only to inspire the=20 final, unspeakable vengeance of her “brain-sick” chief=20 victim, Titus (“And make two pasties of your shameful=20 heads/ And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam/ Like=20 to the earth swallow her own increase”, he gloats to=20 Tamora’s bound sons). Unlike Aeschylus’s Oresteian=20 trilogy, Titus offers no intervention by the gods to end=20 the futile malice.=20

Gregory Doran’s production for the Market Theatre=20 topples risibly into the “relevant” pit. With grizzled=20 beard and camouflage uniform, Titus resembles nobody so=20 much as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging’s farcical=20 leader; the Goths — one must be politically correct,=20 after all — are enraged victims of colonisation;=20 Lavinia, in wedding-gown and short white gloves, has a=20 Voortrekker-maiden quality; and, for comic measure,=20 Demetrius and Chiron are low-camp tsotsis in violet and=20 red suits (respectively, I think, but my memory might=20 have reeled).=20

Such a bizarre, unthinking melange of styles is in no=20 way suited to Shakespeare’s masterly blending of genres=20 and emotions, and serves only to raise maddening=20 questions, both serious and facetious, in the minds of=20 bewildered audiences. =20

If Titus is presented in a manner recalling the object=20 of Jani Allen’s “schoolgirlish” twitterings, then how=20 can he inspire the requisite pity and awe when=20 delivering “For now I stand as one upon a rock,/=20 Environ’d with a wilderness of sea …”, a speech that=20 rightly inspired Kenneth Tynan to claim that there are=20 moments in Titus in which “the parallel with Lear is=20 sibling-close”? If Lavinia, complete with kappie- commando accent, is utterly lacking in charm or dignity,=20 then does the director wish to lessen the horror of her=20 rape and mutilation? (A distasteful thought, which no=20 production should inspire.)=20

If the play is firmly, not to mention crudely, rooted in=20 South African militarism, then don’t the constant=20 classical allusions (mainly to Ovid’s Philomela and to=20 the tale of Thyestes) flow rather oddly from such=20 brutish lips? Why, oh why, is every performance hobbled,=20 nay, mangled, by the use of offensively exaggerated=20 South Effrican accents?=20

The accents. Why, there’s the rub. Nobody is demanding=20 the crystalline voices of a Vanessa Redgrave or a John=20 Gielgud from a local cast, but it does seem wilfully=20 perverse of a director to rob most lines of beauty,=20 grandeur or even meaning by an insistence on=20 relentlessly rolling r’s and pancake-flat vowel sounds. =20

Dorothy Ann Gould’s Tamora looks and sounds like=20 Fugard’s Milly on a rather bizarre safari; Sello Maake’s=20 Aaron, when not inaudible, is incomprehensible, growling=20 of the sun’s gilding of the ocean with “his bims”, and=20 unforgivably swallowing one of Aaron’s most celebrated=20 and splendid lines, “I will be bright, and shine in=20 pearl and gold”. =20

Jennifer Woodburne’s Lavinia has a certain doll-like=20 pathos after her fate worse than any form of death, but=20 her one-dimensional prissiness before the rape tends to=20 obscure subsequent minor merits. The other supporting=20 players hardly merit discussion, although Dale Cutts as=20 Marcus is capable enough in his predictable way.=20

Sher’s own performance has some flamboyantly effective=20 touches: the ripping up of the “silent” stones, the=20 grotesque waltz with Lavinia before he kills her, and,=20 most powerful, the pelting of Tamora with fragments of=20 the Thyestean pie. At times too, when his Flip Vorster=20 accent slips, as, praise the Lord, it often does, he=20 gives us hints of his range and authority as an actor.=20 His delivery of “I am the sea” had the appropriate=20 Olivier-like ring, and the combination of lament and=20 self-mockery in his rendition of one of my favourite=20 passages, “What fool hath added water to the sea …?”,=20 was flawless. But what a waste, what a ridiculous,=20 misconceived waste.=20

The production, similarly, features some striking=20 flourishes: the birth of Tamora’s son is effectively=20 staged with screams, writhing, and fluttering white=20 drapes; the “dark, blood-drinking pit” is frighteningly=20 authentic because of a skilful use of the different=20 levels of the Market itself; the use of a car horn for=20 the hunting peal is witty; and the frequent jackal=20 (hyena?) sound effects seem chillingly apt. =20

I could have done without Saturninus’ conducting=20 imperial negotiations from the lavatory, but to berate=20 such absurdities is really like — one has to use the=20 cliche — fussing about fish-knives on the Titanic. T=20 his is a botched, insultingly unsubtle production of an=20 often misunderstood, marvellous play. Oh, the pity of=20 it! …=20