Joy Watters reviews a 'provocative and challenging' production.
Dundee Rep at last sails out of the doldrums into the high seas of Shakespeare’s most violent and gruesome tragedy. Like it or loathe it, outgoing Rep director Philip Howard’s new adaptation is not going to leave an audience cold.
Provocative and challenging, Howard’s collaboration with director/designer Stewart Laing takes a culinary angle on the tale of conquering general Titus Andronicus returning home after a decade fighting the Goths.
The concept feeds off the play’s notorious final scene where Titus becomes a cook serving up pies made of human flesh. In this version, Rome becomes a restaurant, housed in the Rep’s Bonar Hall space.
A stainless steel range bisects the area with the audience sitting on three sides at refectory tables. The restaurant metaphor is not particularly enriching, although it does supply an innovative acting space.
Titus returns from the wars to Rome, with the spoils, Tamora, Queen of the Goths and her sons, sacrificing one of them on arrival. This triggers an unstoppable trail of violence and destruction as rape, mutilation and murder become the weapons of the power struggle.
Video clips are used to show the horrendous acts being committed, a medium echoing the tragedy of unspeakable acts of contemporary barbarism. The action is underpinned by JD Twitch’s stunning soundscape.
The original cast of 27 characters has been halved with six students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland joining six more seasoned performers.
As Titus, George Anton lacks power in his performance; initially it is missing the strength of the conquering general and then understates both the terrifying mania of a madman bent on revenge and the grief of a father.
Meanwhile, Emily Winter’s Tamora certainly has the measure of the Queen of the Goths, prepared to use acts of cruelty or womanly wiles to get revenge.
The scene where Titus argues with family members over who is going to chop off their hand to save his two sons could be from the bleakest, blackest comedy.
Howard and Laing have the last laugh. A piping hot Scotch pie, garnished with a squirt of blood-red ketchup, is served to each audience member at the same time as Titus serves a pie, made of her sons, to Tamora.
Runs until April 24.
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