Word: andronicus
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...London has been in an uproar over the scheduled destruction of two of the city's recently discovered archaeological treasures: the ruins of a Roman bath complex that dates back 2,000 years and the underground remains of the Rose, the Elizabethan theater where Shakespeare may have premiered Titus Andronicus and Henry VI and even trod the stage...
Shakespeare is admirably served at the R.S.C. by an unstintingly gory Titus Andronicus, a Twelfth Night that underscores the play's dialectic between religious piety and hedonism and a Merchant of Venice that stars Anthony Sher as an unabashedly Levantine Shylock. Sher's lilting cadence, bushy beard, flowing robes and sinuously Oriental gestures bespeak his status as an outsider in a world, much like our own, where economic imperatives bring diverse peoples into close contact without necessarily allowing them to understand one another...
...directors do not hesitate to point up themes, nor do they shy away from the unpleasant. Measure, As You Like It and the third outdoor production, the infrequently seen Titus Andronicus, all emphasize the savagery that befalls well-governed states when just men fail to hold on to power. Titus features three hands chopped off, one tongue cut out, two doses of unknowing cannibalism, plus gang rape, and murders by sword, starvation and bleeding to death. Director Pat Patton represents the gore in Japanese fashion, with streamers of red ribbon, but audiences still titter as bodies heap...
...recent PBS production of Titus, Andronicus (a.k.a. the Elizabethan Chainsaw Massacre) showed, a gutsy director can turn even Shakespeare's faults into virtues. Had Kilty focused his attention on energizing Labour's silliness with some more madcap excess, a merely promising production might have grown into greatness. As this is Kilty's second shot at the play, maybe the third time will do the charm...
...manifest ugliness, it makes a powerful subject for a play, since any bruising or brutal confrontation between two or more human beings is the atavistic fuel of drama. Indeed, plays with rape as a central motif recur in theatrical literature. Perhaps the most notable is Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, in which the heroine-victim, Lavinia, has her tongue cut out and her hands cut off. She secures her revenge when she reveals her rapists' identities by scratching their names in sand...