I suggest that if there was any less Titus in it or if Newell had written his own piece entirely, it would work less well. The tension of never quite knowing how much of the acting was really fun, was this part acting or real, when were these alleged actors going to understand how far they were over the line, who was going to yell stop, watching the whole evening spiral out of control, that whole build up was perfectly executed. Did it work because the action was immediate while the words were 95% Shakespeare? I think yes.

The issue that really popped for me personally, the next morning, were the two characters who appeared to get it, realized the pending disaster, the “adults” as Chris Jones labeled them, those two never yelled Stop. Who among us has been in the same shoes and couldn’t find our voice and summon our courage when we should have? How hard or easy is this to do? When will it happen again? Watching Newell’s Titus was like watching the rise of the Nazi party in one extreme, or an allegory on petty office politics in another. That’s just one view I walked away with.

I need to see it again, it had that kind of impact.

It is not the concept of the piece that I disagree with. It is the execution of that concept that I found to be very unsuccessful.

Titus Andronicus, I would venture to say, is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known works. It is extremely dark and gory which perhaps offers an explanation of why it is not overly produced. So when a theater company steps forward to produce this work, I get very excited. What disappointed me with this production is that I felt the conceptual elements outshined, and took away from the very beautiful and powerful text of this play. The Bard has given powerful and unrelenting characters a wonderfully crafted arsenal of vocal weaponry that seems tossed into the ever present oven at the front of the stage. Why perform Shakespeare if you are going to dump out the text? Now there are some in the blogging world that says this makes me a “purist”. Maybe I am. But why perform Shakespeare’s work if you feel that it can be hacked and torn apart to serve whatever purpose you come up with?

Tom Stoppard once wanted to take a look at Hamlet from another perspective. Did he produce a production of Hamlet wherein he chucked the very carefully structured text out the window and gave characters the freedom to change names, and add in bits of modern text as they saw fit? No! He wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He took the time to write a new work that gave his vision a framework that would best suit his purpose. While selecting bits of the Hamlet text to tie into his original work, his “behind the scene” look at a well know, often performed play took on new life without compromising the original text.

If Charles Newell wanted to explore the themes of elite social, economic, and educational/intellectual status or intellectual and moral superiority and how it allows those who possess it to embrace their entitlements and privileges in what ultimately becomes a violent manner – he should have written his own play. He could have crafted a story in which the situation- these men and their secret society- took the forefront and used Titus, or their production of Titus, to thread his story line together. I think this is where the real flaw in the production lies. In using Titus as the back bone and not crafting a solid, additional story line, we are left unsatisfied with not only the story of what is happening with these young men and their club, but also with the lives of the characters in the original work. There are speeches in Titus that are brilliantly haunting. These were thrown out the window as actors giggled and ran around the stage during the most chilling exchanges- such as that of Tamora and Aaron being discovered in the wood by Bassianus and Lavinia. The exchange of power in this scene as we move from Aaron and Tamora being the guilty parties being turned over to Saturninus to Bassianus getting killed and Lavinia being hauled off to be pillaged and carved up was made a mockery of in this production. I don’t understand that. All the themes that Mr. Newell is being credited for highlighting with this terribly clever concept are already there in the original work. If anything this production lessoned the blow of the themes in Titus.

Yes, it is important to bring new life to work. Shakespeare’s texts have been around for a long time. Productions of these plays have been produced time and time again because of their timeless themes and teachings. Much has been done to the work to try and keep it fresh- modern costuming, clever changes of location or time period- and all seem to stick to the original text. Design concept is a very valid arena in which to update the work. But if you feel the work is so outdated or over done that it can’t stand up on its own feet there is a very simple solution- don’t produce one of his plays! Write your own creepy play about secret societies gone awry. In fact, I believe there are several motion pictures out there that do that very thing!

And speaking of film, say what you will about Taymor’s masterpiece. A breast plate is a costume choice, not a concept for a play. Titus with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lang is a balls to the wall production of a gory and violent piece of theater that stretches ones imagination and dramatic vision while keeping the text in tact. There is nothing in that work that feels stale or underexplored.

I will agree with the blogger that the cast at The Court was fantastic. If they had been allowed to perform the play as written by a legend that has stood the test of time I think we would have been witness to some mind blowing performances. But when one has to break up their thought process and line delivery by pulling a fake script out of their back pocket to “find a line” it is the performance, and not only the audience, that are lost.