Titus Andronicus
The Stratford Festival
The National Post

Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus -- there doesn't seem any good reason for denying it's Shakespeare's -- is best known as the play in which the father of a savagely raped daughter dismembers her two assailants and bakes them in a pie, which he then serves up to their mother, who has been their coach and accomplice. This exceptionally bloody private tragedy, its author's first, is neatly packaged within an exceptionally cynical public one.

It all begins with the title character, an aged Roman war hero, returning from a victorious campaign against the Goths, and being offered the Imperial crown. He declines it -- an abdication that proves at least as unwise as that of his spiritual descendant King Lear, who at least was able to enjoy his power before surrendering it.

Before the arrival of Titus, the two sons of the late emperor have been squabbling over the succession. Asked to choose between them, Titus favours the elder, Saturninus, a transparently nasty piece of work, over the younger, Bassianus, a comparatively nice one. He even throws in his daughter Lavinia as a coronation gift.

By the time the play's long first scene is over, Bassianus, who loves and is loved by Lavinia, will have abducted her, abetted by most of Titus' family. Titus himself, shocked and disgusted by this conduct, will have killed his own youngest son. (He has four when the play starts, having already lost 21 on the field. He seems to consider this a good batting average.) The new emperor, piously dissociating himself from such a family, takes to wife Tamora, the captive Gothic queen, who has her own beef against Titus, since he has celebrated his homecoming (I nearly said his Romecoming) by giving up her eldest son for ritual sacrifice.

Virtue in this play, as in many others, is a function less of what you do than of what is done to you. Tamora, pleading for the life of her firstborn, is a sympathetic figure, but she forfeits this status as soon as she becomes queen and sets about avenging herself.

Titus, meanwhile, settles down to a career of crazed victimhood and his sufferings and those of his relatives should be catalogued rather than related: 1) Lavinia is ravished by Tamora's surviving sons, who then cut off her hands and tongue to stop her informing against them; 2) Lavinia's husband is murdered, and two of Titus' sons are framed and executed; 3) this may be too petty to include, but Lucius, Titus' remaining son, is banished from Rome for trying to defend his brothers; 4) Titus allows his hand to be chopped off as ransom for his sons, but finds he has been tricked. The subsequent stage-direction: "Enter a Messenger, with two heads and a hand," tells all you need to know.

Tamora, once the action is launched, hardly mentions her initial grievance. Titus, by contrast, never stops mentioning his. And besides, there is the mute and mutilated figure of his daughter as a constant on-stage reminder.

By the time he takes on the role of specialty-chef, Titus is firmly established as the good guy and his revenge seems not only justified but cute. He stages it at a peace conference, called between the emperor and the banished Lucius, who has returned at the head of an army of Goths. (These don't seem to be the barbarians of the history books. They talk blank verse as smooth as any Roman, and one of them takes time off to survey the ruins of a nearby monastery. There's no suggestion he himself has ruined it.) The central scenes have featured much talk of "Rome," but as an abstraction rather than a place. Now, suddenly, it swings right back into focus. Richard Rose's Stratford production, excellently staged and intelligently acted, is especially good at summoning this public world. He has chosen a between-world-wars Italian setting, in which frock-coated senators earnestly and ineffectually debate, while black-shirted storm troopers besiege the Capitol and generals in desert fatigues use the public-address system to address the public on what they consider good for it. To his credit, he doesn't force his parallels and for much of the play one simply forgets the trappings.

The personal drama is gripping, but not moving. James Blendick's Titus is an admirable performance in a context where admirability looks somewhat pale. Like all Tituses, presumably since Olivier, he presents a soldier who has lived by the book and is maddened when it fails him. He speaks in the round and resonant Old Stratfordian style of a Douglas Campbell or a William Hutt, and with a matter-of- fact authority distinctively his own. What he lacks is the terrible, logical insanity brought to the role by Brian Cox on stage or Anthony Hopkins on screen. At any given moment he is honest and believable: fine as far as he goes, but never going quite far enough.

Xuan Fraser plays Aaron the Moor in a similar though less accomplished vein -- with a jaunty lightweight relish that stops a long way short of the role's full, and enchanting, diabolism. Aaron, who goes to his death regretting any good deed he may absent- mindedly have committed, is the play's arch-villain, though it's probably an index of the author's immaturity that one can describe the plot without mentioning him. He counsels rather than performs. (Note that he and Titus have only one brief scene together.)

Diane D'Aquila's lascivious Tamora seems to be hovering on the brink of full achievement. Scott Wentworth's Saturninus, though, is there already -- he's Mussolini crossed with Nero, a cringing, sneering bridge between two millennia of Adriatic tyranny.

Peter Hutt gives a sympathetic account of Titus' brother and Evan Buliung a commanding one of his son. These are two characters who lead charmed lives: on their feet at the end and with a full complement of limbs and organs.

Marion Day, as the spectacularly ill-starred Lavinia, moves through the play like a dark accusing Fury after her despoilment; and before it, too. The final cascade of killings is handled with great variety and invention, with never an unwanted laugh. The play, as we are increasingly recognizing, is a good one, and blisteringly credible.