Peter Viney's Blog

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Max Webster
Set & Costume Joanna Scotcher
Composer Matthew Herbert

The Royal Shakespeare Company
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Saturday 26th April 2025, 13.30

CAST
Simon Russell Beale- Titus Andronicus

Jeremy Ang Jones – Demetrius
Matthew Chan-Reees – Chiron
Danny Collins – Martius / Messenger
Bassianus / Publius – Ned Costello
Emma Fielding – Marcia Andronicus
Joshua James – Saturnius
Natey Jones – Aaron
Thomas Josling – Quintus / Aemilius
Wendy Kweh – Tamora
Joel MacCormack – Lucius
Jerone Maesh-Reid – Alarbus / Goth
Sharita Oomeer – Nurse / Goth
Letty Thomas – Lavinia

For director Max Webster the leap from a hilarious Importance of Being Earnest at the National last year, to the bloodiest play of all, Titus Andronicus, at the RSC (via Macbeth at the Donmar) is a major change. Simon Russell Beale’s speciality is Shakespeare in modern dress.

What a contrast to the vivid, colourful and elaborate Much Ado About Nothing running next door in the other RSC theatre. The costume colour palette is grey, black, white. Blue for the Goths.

The stage is a marble slab, with a drain running around the outside for the blood, and then glass screens to protect the front rows. There must have been splashes of gore over the top earlier, because they get blankets too.

A dozen years ago, a new easily washable stage blood suddenly meant gallons of the stuff in productions. In Jamie Lloyd’s Macbeth at the Trafalgar Studio, the front two rows got heavily splattered. Like most new theatrical toys, after that initial overuse, stage blood got less used. This is Titus Andronicus, the bloodiest play of all. There will be blood. At some points hoses descend to apply it. Yes, that much blood.

It’s not a play where most can instantly summarise the plot. How fast can I do this?

The Roman emperor has died, and the people and senate have to select the successor, his older son Saturnius, or the younger, Bassianus. Both make their appeal. This election is conducted by the tribune, Marcia Andronicus, Titus’s sister (as you will have guessed this was Marcus not Marcia in the original).

The Roman general, Titus Andronicus, arrives with the coffin of a son (the twenty-second of his sons to have been killed in battle, suggesting carelessness at least, or more likely stupidity).

The Goth prisoners are dragged on, and Titus selects the eldest son of Queen Tamara to be horribly executed. Tamara pleads for his life, but Titus is adamant. This will be a revenge tragedy then.

The people want Titus as Emperor, but he declines. In spite of Saturnius making a particularly nasty speech to him, he chooses him as the older.

Saturnius then chooses Titus’ daughter Lavinia as Empress, knowing full well that his brother planned to marry her. Then he spots Tamara and is instantly attracted and chooses her instead, throwing Lavinia back to Bassanius.

Tamara once established, plots with her two evil sons Chiron and Demetrius to murder Bassanius and to blame Titus’s two sons for the deed. Tamara is a hands-on villain, taking the knife to Lavinia herself initially.

They will also rape Lavinia, and cut out her tongue and cut off her hands so she cannot name the rapists. We learn that her long time lover is Aaron the Moor, who assists in the plot.

Bassanius is murdered. Titus’s sons are arrested. Lavinia is revealed with stumps for hands and no tongue. There is a picture on the RSC Photo Gallery, but I will spare you.

Titus is told if he has his hand cut off the sons’ lives will be spared. It is a trick and having lost his hand, he is presented with their heads. As an aside, cutting off hands goes with expeditions against the Goths. Shakespeare knew his Roman history. Julius Caesar had an orgy of hand cutting in what is now Germany, as it leaves someone who has to be cared for, so is a permanent burden.

Titus’s other son (he has so many) is Lucius and he escapes to raise an army with the Goths. To confuse matters, the grandson is called Lucius too. Or two. I guess the family ran out of names.

In part two, Lavinia reveals all at the dinner table. This is the scene when Marcia kills a fly, and excuses the killing because like Aaron, it’s black. It starts with Titus protesting:

But how if that fly had a father and a mother
Poor harmless fly
That with his pretty buzzing melody
Came here to make us merry.
And thou hast kill’d him.

Then Marcia:
Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favoured fly
Like to the Empress’ Moor, therefore I kill’d him.

The day before I’d picked up Michael Pennington’s Sweet William in Oxfam. It’s his book on Shakespeare and I leafed through to Titus Andronicus references. Pennington says:
Apart from the lousy verse – the line about the fly’s father and mother may be Shakespeare’s worst -it’s not an unpromising idea, this crazy distortion brought upon by grief; it’s jusatr that it’s clumsily delivered.

Ah, but not here. Marcia and Titus made perfect sense of ity, then Titus battered the corpse uncontrollably with his stick.

Then the plot thickens, because Tamara has given birth to a black baby, Aaron’s child. The child must be swapped for a white one before Saturnius sees it and the women attendants at the birth must be killed. Aaron wants the baby, his son, to live.

Lucius approaches with an army. Saturnius and Tamara are invited to a parley chez Titus. By this time, Saturnius is going Goth.

Titus captures Chiron and Demetrius and has them killed. He minces their bones and cooks them in a pie which is served to Tamara. This is probably the main thing people remember about thre play. In this version, having been told she’s eating mashed son, Tamara scoffs the rest with gusto. Aaron ends the play declaring evil is his only intent.

This is the play with Aaron the Evil Moor. It cannot be played colour blind in the other parts. They decided to cast East Asian ethnicity actors as the Goths, Wendy Kweh as Tamara, then for her sons, Jeremy Ang Jones as Demetrius and Matthew Chan-Rees as Chiron. That’s strong visually. They also marked the Goths with blue, meaning blue prisoner overalls rather than the cliché Guantanamo orange. So as Saturnius gets drawn deeper in by Tamara he adopts a blue cloak, then blue face paint.

Because it’s stripped so bare, this really is an actors and lines version. When you’ve cast Simon Russell Beale as Timon, Joshua James as histrionic Emperor Saturnius and Natey Jones as Aaron, stressing quality of performance is the way to go. These are three towering performances. Wendy Kweh delivered Tamara extremely well, but given Saturnius’s instant attraction to her when she is delivered as a prisoner, I would expect her to look more exotic, more voluptuous.

Modern dress? The best production I’ve seen was Lucy Bailey’s direction at The Globe in 2006, repeated in 2014. It still is. That’s the full Roman version. Exotic Goths. Brass trumpets, smoke and fire. To a degree, it’s a cop out setting it in Roman times, suggesting how savage life was but confining it to the distant past.

The RSC did modern dress last time in 2017, and screwed it up, in spite of having David Troughton as Titus and Martin Hutson as Saturnius, by suddenly going for silly comedy in the second part. In retrospect, the first half was more impressive in 2017 than in 2025 but then it went daft and lost it. They do not make that mistake twice.

There is a temptation in setting it today to reference the current savagery in Ukraine and Gaza. Certainly a mad histrionic emperor reads Trump to me, just as someone wholly bent on evil deeds reads Putin. I would have been sorely tempted, but they don’t at all. You can think of contemporary references but that’s up to you. No one points the way.

There are inevitably touches of gallows humour that bring grim laughter, such as Aaron brandishing and starting up a chain saw to cut off Titus’ hand, but nothing is played for laughs. The modern touch is that robotic machines trundle along overhead gantries to deliver nooses, chains, lift the slab in the centre of the stage. The robot arms can deliver way more blood than concealed blood capsules. They can drench the characters.

Dancing, ugly chthonic dancing, with very loud thumping bass is used to connect / separate scenes.

It’s an acting masterclass from Simon Russell Beale, but I had expected that. Both Joshua James and Natey Jones give superb performances as Saturnius and Aaron. Bringing Lavinia in a plastic sheet is really terrifying. Letty Thomas does one of the hardest parts in the canon brilliantly too. Negatives? Lots of blood but silly little paring knives.

Overall?

****

SEATING

My reviews do the bits others ignore. Before this matinee, the Swan cafe / bar was closed for a private function. Presentation packs and programmes were being taken in. Was it Shakespeare’s Birthday, or was it “press afternoon”? When I booked this season, I went to this play first, judging that Simon Russell Beale’s name would make it the most sought after ticket. I got past the booking queue fast, but the only seats I could get in the stalls were Row J. Back row. Karen didn’t come with me, having had a hip operation and not fancying struggling to get to a seat. Unusually, the RSC didn’t offer an exchange on the ticket as there was still good availability. Odd, I thought. Not when I booked. But yes, in rows F and G (I assume) there were two blocks of five or six vacant seats. Why? The RSC doesn’t do bulk sales to Ticketmaster (that often leads to empty premium seats in West End theatres). Had they been held back for the birthday and declined? I was glad to have an empty seat, as J20, 21 and 22 are the worst seats I’ve ever found at the RSC (I exclude The Other Place which had worse last time). They’re high raised seats. Looking to my left, most of the row had a foot rest bar. Not these three. No foot bar, but a narrower bar under the seat. I couldn’t reach the floor, but I also couldn’t reach the rest under the seat without bending my knees painfully. I’m just over 6 foot, not unusually tall, and I have had knee replacement. Please directors and architects. Choose some 6 footers and make them watch a long play there, then do something about it.

UNDERSTUDIES

Thankfully none this afternoon. But I bought the programme the evening before, Friday, along with the Much Ado About Nothing programme. It had an insert, though the salesperson said ‘It’ll probably be OK tomorrow.” (And it was). Look:

Lavinia is the most physically demanding part in the play, and also there is a great deal of physical interaction. But it was going to be READ, and by a MALE assistant director? I’d guess he’d worked on the scenes so knew the movements, but even so. How would there be the shock of the hands and tongue being cut off? Only two of the cast are listed as understudies, one for Aaron, one for Tamara. I guess if you lost Titus it would be a cancellation, but every theatre reserves the right to put on understudies. After all, you’ve travelled, you’ve booked a hotel. You’d prefer an understudy to an evening in the limited delights of Stratford. A look at the cast list reveals the only female possibility is Sharita Oomeer, playing the Nurse and a Goth, and she is understudying Tamara. Now this is normally why the RSC or National or Globe have two or three ensemble players who flesh out scenes, but also serve as understudies and indeed, understudies of other actors who are understudying lead roles. Clearly not here. It is an economy, but one too far. You can always have extra Goths and Romans, and I suggest they need one male and one female. No Lavinia is probably the second worst loss in the play.

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

They hadn’t at the point I saw it. Was press night delayed?

5 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph *****

4 star
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

TITUS ANDRONICUS
Titus Andronicus Globe 2014
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017 (David Troughton)
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2025 (Simon Russell-Beale)

MAX WEBSTER
Macbeth, Donmar Warehouse 2025 (w. David Tennant)
The Importance of Being Earnest, National Theatre 2024
Much Ado About Nothing, Globe 2014

SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
John Gabriel Borkman by Ibsen, Bridge Theatre 2022
The Tempest, RSC 2016 (Prospero)
King Lear, National Theatre, 2014 (Lear)
The Hot House, by Harold Pinter, Trafalgar Studios, 2013
Privates on Parade, by Peter Nichols, Michael Grandage Season, 2012
Timon of Athens, National Theatre, 2012 (Timon)

JOSHUA JAMES
The Vortex by Noël Coward, Chichester 2023 (Nicky Lancaster)
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Classic Spring, 2018
King Lear, Globe 2017 (Edgar)
Life of Galileo, Young Vic, 2017  (Ludovico + various)
The Seagull, Chichester 2015 (Konstantin)
Platonov, Chichester 2015 (Dr Triletsky)

NATEY JONES
The Grapes of Wrath, National Theatre, 2024 (Jim Casey)
Dr Faustus, RSC 2016
Don Quixote, RSC 2016

WENDY KWEH
Much Ado About Nothing, National 2022 (Antonia)
Snow in Midsummer, RSC 2017

LETTY THOMAS
As You Like It, RSC Garden Theatre 2024 (Rosalind)

EMMA FIELDING
A Woman of No Importance, Classic Spring 2017

JOEL MacCORMACK
Measure For Measure, Globe 2015 (Claudio)
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, RSC 2015