Titus Andronicus 2006

Titus AndronicusTitus Andronicus 2006 (Photo: Graham Burke)

Director's Note

9th February - 18th March 2006
Titus Andronicus has had a chequered life.  As far as we know, it was among the most popular – perhaps the most popular and most frequently performed – of Shakespeare’s plays during his lifetime.  But as tastes changed during the eighteenth century, it was considered too violent and harsh – too indecorous – and so sank from public view.  The Victorians thought no better of it and it was really not until after the second world war that it became rehabilitated – most influentially by Peter Brook in a production in 1955 starring Laurence Olivier and Vivienne Leigh – and gradually re-established itself in the Shakespeare repertoire.
  Its long period of dishonourable exile prompted myths and errors that persist to this day – principally that it was not by Shakespeare at all, or that it was a collaboration between him and a number of unknown hacks, or that it was Shakespeare’s but merely an early, imitative work designed to pander to the very lowest of tastes.  We can now be confident that none of these notions had any basis in fact and that their purpose, conscious or unconscious, was to legitimise the disregard of a powerful, searching and highly wrought text that both readers and audience found far too hot to handle.
  Its violent story – and the passionate self-righteousness of all the doers of its terrible deeds – now seems all too topical.  It is truly a play for today, demanding of us the complex responses and understanding that events, local, national and international, ask of us week by week.
  At the same time it is – as all good theatre must be – thoroughly entertaining and moving, with moments of terrible laughter.  We find such ways to retell these  events in order to manage and cope with them; to remain human by including them, rather than by attempting – as eighteenth century readers did – to deny their authenticity and banish them from our consciousness. Andrew Hilton

Cast

Saturninus Paul Currier  
Bassianus & 1st Goth Philip Buck
Marcus Andronicus Roland Oliver
Tribune & Poor Man Peter Townsend
Titus Andronicus Bill Wallis     
Lucius Andronicus Matthew Thomas  
Quintus Andronicus & 2nd Goth Ben Ingles     
Martius Andronicus & Publius Phil Mulryne
Mutius Andronicus & Caius Sempronius Craig Fuller    
Tamora Lucy Black   
Alarbus & Emillius Jonathan Gunning   
Demetrius Tom Sherman  
Chiron Jacob Dylan Thomas  
Aaron Leo Wringer
Lavinia Catherine Hamilton
Servant & Nurse Siobhan McMillan     
Young Lucius James Hilton & Michael Smith

Production

Director Andrew Hilton
Associate Director & Editor Dominic Power
Set & Costume Designer Vicki Cowan-Ostersen
Costume Supervisor Rosalind Marshall
Lighting Designer Paul Towson
Composer John Telfer
Murders & Other Effects Peter Clifford
Production Photographer Graham Burke

Production Manager Jonathan Yeoman
Stage Manager Jayne Byrom
Deputy Stage Manager Eleanor Dixon
Assistant Stage Manager Adam Moiore
Costume Laundry Kim Winter

Reviews

The Guardian
13th February 2006
* * * *
Watching Andrew Hilton's engrossing production, it is hard to understand why Shakespeare's play has been so neglected. True, it is a banquet of blood-letting, rape, murder and mutilation - but, as Hilton proves, it is much more than some 17th-century spatter-movie. Its themes of revenge and retribution, and a cycle of violence that leads only to more blood-letting until families are wiped out and the state totters, remains pertinent, not least because of the protagonists' highly developed sense of self-righteousness about their bloody acts. This may rob the characters of tragic status, but the drama nevertheless has moments of great tragedy: Titus' discovery of his ravished and mutilated daughter Lavinia, alone in the forest like a wounded doe, is full of pity and horror.
  Hilton transposes the play to the 18th century, so that the bewigged finish of the men and the formality of the music offer a sharp contrast to the chaos that ensues as Rome is transformed into "a wilderness of tigers". The artistic director is known for his restraint, and here it plays dividends, keeping the grand guignol and the giggles in check as the body count rises.
  The extent to which Shakespeare makes women and blacks (the Goth queen Tamora and her Moor lover Aaron) shoulder most of the blame may be uncomfortable to modern sensibilities. But neither Shakespeare nor Hilton shirks from showing how disaster stems from Titus Andronicus' initial foolish lack of compassion and justice.
  Looking like Antony Worrall Thompson, Bill Wallis as Titus cooks up vengeance effectively, although his easy, conversational style of speaking is sometimes indistinct. But the acting honours belong to the women, with Lucy Black steely and sexy as Tamora and Catherine Hamilton heartbreaking as the maimed and voiceless Lavinia. Lyn Gardner

The Observer 
February 19, 2006
Titus Andronicus, which went for two centuries without a full staging, is - well - flavour of the month. Perhaps a new suspicion of empire has led to productions this spring by the Globe and the RSC. But first off is Andrew Hilton's always innovative Tobacco Factory.
  The design is sober: a sand-coloured floor; pillars tied with black mourning bows. The dress is 18th-century. With one bold stroke, Hilton tugs you through a narrative which can easily be a roaring welter. At the end of an episode, the light dies apart from on one spot - it focuses on an abandoned baby, or on a dead limb. And he dares to make the goriest parts of the plot - when tongues and limbs are lopped, when people are baked in a pie - look real.
  Catherine Hamilton, who has spoken and moved so delicately, stands shaking with pain and sorrow; her lopped-off hands are red stumps; she drips blood; soundless words bubble up in her throat. Bill Wallis's crabby, wizened Titus turns up for the pie-tasting in a chef's hat, as spry as some twinkle-toed nursery-rhyme cook. As he serves the portions, wobbling with fleshy gobbets, he licks the carving knife.
  It'll be hard for the other imperial pie-eaters to match such intensity. Susannah Clapp

The Stage
Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory have chosen their patron’s rough-and-ready first shot at tragedy to launch their seventh season of highly accessible theatre.
Geared originally to the Elizabethan theatregoers’ love of blood and guts, the story of revenge best served hot offers a number of modern themes - a monumental if flawed hero and the constant resort to violence for political and personal ends, to name but two.
  Artistic director Andrew Hilton and designer Vicki Cowan-Ostersen have essayed several boldly innovative strokes, not least the choice of full Regency attire, complete with powdered wigs, for the warring Roman factions. This grinds at first, but slowly the dichotomy between the fanciful dress and their bloody acts of murder and mutilation strikes home. So too does the playing of the title role by Bill Wallis as a military conqueror very much in decline, stricken by grief but still capable of terrible deeds. Likewise, Roland Oliver lends the dignity of age to Titus’ upright brother Marcus and there is a powerful performance from Matthew Thomas as Titus’ eldest son Lucius.
  On the dark side of the moral conflict, Lucy Black is a chilling Queen of the Goths, while Leo Wringer glories in his own evil cunning in contrast to Paul Currier’s weakling Emperor Saturninus.
  The vigorous and intelligent approach is enhanced by a striking organ and trumpet-dominated score by John Telfer. Jeremy Brien