|
Sunday, March 31, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Permission to reprint or copy this article/photo must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.
Shakespeare's 'Titus' gives meaning to bloodlust
By Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic
Gruesome dismemberings. A live burial. Madness. Rape. Cannibalism. Final body count: 14.
These could be the stats for a grisly, modern-day slasher flick.
But no: It is a tally of dastardly deeds in Shakespeare's action-packed drama "Titus Andronicus." The play ushers in the new Intiman Theatre season in a staging by artistic director Bartlett Sher.
Was Shakespeare a violence-monger? Or is his brand of stage brutality more meaningful and redeeming than the sensationalized gore-fests created for today's most bloodthirsty viewers?
"What this play is doing is very different from exploitation," asserts Sher, who recently remounted his Intiman production of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" to acclaim in New York and London.
"I see 'Titus Andronicus' as a family tragedy of great resonance. And the violence never feels excessive or unwarranted, because it's never disconnected from the actions, or the characters," Sher says.
|
"In Hollywood movies the bodies fall, and the heroes march off into the sunset. But in Shakespeare's world there are consequences to every violent act — profound consequences."
Certainly, the Bard did not shrink from depicting violence, especially in his tragedies and histories. The chronicles of kings and warriors are, after all, rife with homicidal deeds.
And the Elizabethan audiences he wrote for often expected, and reveled in, onstage sprees of "murder most foul," splashed with inky-black humor.
But "Titus Andronicus," a family-feud tale of increasingly horrific strokes of revenge, enacted against and by a famed Roman Empire general, exists in a category of Shakespearean mayhem all its own.
Over time, many critics branded the script bottom-of-the-barrel Bard, or dismissed the notion Will even wrote it (or much of it). It wasn't until 1904 that an "authoritative" text for the play was recovered. And it was only in 1955 that English director Peter Brook made a new case for its worth, in a bracing production with Laurence Olivier.
Now "Titus Andronicus" is popping up more often at Shakespeare fests in the U.S. and Britain, and in several recent film versions. Most notable: Julie Taymor's visually arresting 1999 release "Titus," with Anthony Hopkins.
This summer, Oregon Shakespeare Festival mounts "Titus Andronicus" in Ashland, Ore., where it runs June 12-Oct. 12.
And in Seattle, Sher's version is a strikingly bold season-opener — a revised take on his heralded 1999 "Titus" at Idaho Shakespeare Festival, which wowed Intiman board members so much it helped Sher score his current job.
Sher points out that this rendition of "Titus," with actor Steve Tague as the titular general and his wife, Kathleen Tague, as the enslaved Goth queen Tamora, goes pretty easy on the scarlet goo.
"It has an extremely spare look, and there are only two moments when there's blood," he explains. "Essentially, this is a play about how revenge never works. And it makes more sense now than ever. Betrayal, revenge, hopelessness — all these things we've felt in the last six months, since 9/11, are deeply embedded in this story."
Gore was all the rage
Literary scholars are not entirely sure what the author of "Titus" had in mind, or the date it was penned (guesses start at 1589), or its sources (possibly works by Ovid and Seneca). But the play reportedly kick-started Shakespeare's writing career, at a time when macabre revenge tragedies by Christopher Marlowe ("Tamburlaine") and Thomas Kyd ("The Spanish Tragedy") were all the rage.
"This is one of Shakespeare's first plays, and he was trying to out-gore his competitors," declares classical scholar Steven Marx, a professor at California Polytechnic State University and author of "Shakespeare and the Bible."
"Shakespeare always played to an appetite for violence in his audience. But there's a discernible progression away from that celebration or indulgence as his writing matures. In his later comedies and romances there's more conscious reflection on violence and on masculine aggression, which is critiqued and repudiated."
Back in 1594, a year when "Titus Andronicus" had two London runs, Shakespeare was a 30-year-old comer with a hit on his hands. Yet not everyone warmed to the graphic tale — which has Tamora, angry at Titus for killing one of her sons, wreak revenge by directing her two other sons to rape and mutilate Titus' daughter, Lavinia. (That's just for starters).
For two centuries after "Titus" debuted, many agreed with 19th-century editor Frederick J. Furnivall's view, that "the play declares plainly ... 'I am not Shakspere's; my repulsive subject, my blood and horrors, are not, and never were, his.' "
In the late 1800s, "Titus Andronicus" was even omitted from a "complete" collection of Shakespeare plays translated into Danish.
Themes out of today's tabloids
But some not only credited the text to the Bard, they considered it intriguing and stageworthy. As directors began connecting the themes and energies in "Titus" to modern cultural trends, the play found more favor.
"Today's audiences feed daily on tabloid sex scandals, teenage gang rape, high-school gun sprees, and the private details of a celebrity murder trial," "Titus" adapter Julie Taymor has noted. "The ferocious, cynical and wickedly witty voice of young Shakespeare has created a condemning dissertation on this addiction to violence."
Sher concurs, but says his approach differs from Taymor's eye-popping spectacle. It is starker, takes place solely in ancient time, and evokes Roman decadence and brutality mainly through motivations and relationships.
"It's shocking and thrilling how contemporary and personal this play feels now," Sher offers. "It's a strangely exhilarating experience, because you go through it and come out on the other side of violence, which is compassion and understanding."
In Marx's view, 'Titus' is "germane now because it shows, in a kind of subversive way given our present patriotic celebration of war and revenge, a maniacal descent into violence. It's also interesting that much of the tragedy is a direct result of a lack of mercy or consideration shown to one's defeated enemies."
In his third season at the Intiman, Sher knows he must balance his artistic impulses with his theater's need to shore up its shaky finances. Considering that, choosing "Titus Andronicus" to inaugurate the season, rather than lighter or more escapist fare, looks risky.
But Sher defends the choice. "Sure, it's a comfort food era we're in," he admits. "But we also need to start dealing directly with the emotional, personal and social consequences of violence. What's the alternative? Mass amnesia? Our art gives us an opportunity to confront what's going on around us. As a people, we can no longer afford to isolate ourselves."