Titus Andronicus RSC

I saw this last week and thought it was absolutely frightful; summed up by Titus's line: "When will this fearful slumber have an end?"

No. You?

I've seen this play four times (plus the film) and this one was the least satisfactory of the four but it was still head and shoulders above the other three offerings in this dismal RSC Romans season. At least the director had a go here with some evidence of imagination. The whole was a bit of a rag-bag of good things and bad things with a lack of a single vision for the play.

Good were the overall pacing and momentum of the production, and some of the characterisations like Tamora's sons.

Bad were the absurd West Side Story opening and the totally pointless interactions with the front row of the audience, charitably we could call it Brechtian but like a few things in the production it just happened once and was not sustained - having Titus drop out of character and indulge in 1970's light entertainment banter with the audience is just foolish. As noted above the initial scenes with the Roman crowd were also forgotten later. Also I agree that the final image presented to us was puzzling.

The worst scene of the lot was Tamora appearing as Revenge, audience members who didn't know the play must have been baffled. There is only one approach to this scene (brilliantly done in the Deborah Warner production) - you first have to establish beyond doubt that all the characters in the play think that Titus has gone mad and it helps if the audience believe this too. Then you can believe he could be swayed by the pantomime Tamora arranges.

The best thing about this Roman season was that I paid £10 for a top price centre stalls seat for each of the four productions - the RSC's fall from grace has some compensations. 

For someone unfamiliar with the play, is this production worth seeing?

The Deborah Warner version was very stark and uncompromising, it treated the play entirely seriously with no laughs at all except in the black comedy of the pie scene. No set to speak of. Much less gore than in this version but as it was in a small space (Swan/The Pit) just the threat of violence made it very claustrophobic.  Plus of course Brian Cox in terrifying form.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jan/01/brian-cox-first-rsc-performance

Her productions of this, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar have been the best work of hers I've seen. 

Contrast with this production where the tone was all over the place. That scene with a regiment of Titus' sons and one of them barking out incomprehensible orders like something out of Dad's Army - that was just a cheap laugh bolted on to the production, not something that served the text at that point. 

Yes i liked that production, Stephen Boxer is a v underrated actor.

Thanks for the responses, do you think putting it on in a bigger space like the Barbican led them to thinking they had to add more humour to it, or was that just a mis-step that might have happened with this director wherever it was performed?

Yep I loved the 2013 RSC production - I think they got it absolutely right. And I'm old enough to remember the monumental RSC Roman season at the aldwych in the 70s....Janet Suzman initially playing Lavinia and then Judy Geeson. I remember John Wood in it as well. a great white box set with a tilting upper level.

It's Blanche McIntyre, she's into broad humour. Sometimes it works beautifully, but maybe not quite so much here.

I think some front row stalls are held back as £10 day seats but for productions with lots of seats available on the performance day the box office designate "best available seats" as day seats and sell them first so if the performance doesn't sell out those front row seats will be left unsold.

I did not see the 1970s Romans season - that was the season Trevor Nunn directed all four Roman plays in a single season and understandably had some sort of nervous breakdown at the end. 

I stand corrected for clumsy grammar.