Who knew that it is possible to come out of Titus Andronicus laughing? The Shakespeare play that comes with a trigger warning and opens with a flourish of burials has been rather insightfully performed at Corpus Christi with the barest of budgets and the starkest of stages. Currently studying the play in terms of its presentation of sexual violence, I went in pretty dubious about how its extremely sensitive themes would be dealt with. It takes a lot of guts to tear someone else’s out in front of a room full of people, and luckily, the imaginative and brave direction from Charlotte Ferguson kept this production walking the fine line between tragedy and gratuitous horror by focusing on its inherent absurdity.
Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably for any college-based student production, the casting wasn’t consistent. Although perhaps more unfortunately for these guys, I’ve seen Julie Taymor’s Titus (starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cummings) a million times, and have come to regard their representations of the idiosyncrasies of each character as inextricable from the lines. I missed Hopkins’ quiet gravitas, and while there is nothing to be done about the obvious problem of youth in Joseph Stephenson (who played the title role), his performance lacked the nuance I needed.
Particularly, it is easy to shout most of the lines in this play – yet increasing decibels isn’t necessarily the best way to convey the terrible trauma of grief, anger and physical pain. The performance became much more layered after Titus unhinges – his ability to hit home the unsettling comedy inherent in Shakespeare’s punning about mutilation was admirable. Most admirable, though, is Mia Smith in the role of Lavinia – her caricatured, sappy demeanour initially put a dampener on my expectations, but as the play wore on, her part became extremely physically demanding and she gained exponentially in emotional resonance. The insightfulness to Mia Smith’s facial expressions paired with the naturalism of her constant high sighs rooted the play in seriousness when it veered off in the opposite direction. I am glad that, alongside the director, Smith was able to deal with such a complex role with maturity, as the presentation of a rape’s aftermath could so easily have become offensive in less capable hands.
Another notable performance came from Jessica Bailes’ Tamora, who wasn’t afraid of exploring how sexuality and motherhood are interwoven. For a play which can slip into a virgin-whore dichotomy, the mixing up of genders in the supporting cast was interesting, if a little undeveloped.
The staging and costumes were so haphazard that they became endearing – the white sheets taped down to the floor and clingfilm-wrapped seat covers acted as an almost comic forewarning of the amount of fake blood that was about to be spilled. Later on, when the symbol of food becomes integral to the plot, I really enjoyed the way that beer cans, crisp packets and microwave pasties were thrown about and torn into with gusto.
The play undoubtedly picked up after the interval, when the tone becomes more domestic and the violence is so ludicrous that no one in the room could keep a straight face. Gerard Krasnopolski’s Aaron really carried the comic undertone up until this point – the wry, swaggering mastermind behind the spiralling violence who isn’t afraid to point a finger at the absurdity of it all.
So when Titus makes his first shuddering belly chuckle and crosses over to the side of the ringleaders, the tightness of the tragedy dissipates and the audience can loosen their belts a bit. By the close, as the gravity of the initial violent acts becomes a distant memory and the bodies quite literally pile up in front of you, I defy you not to laugh too.
