The collected works of William Shakespeare are studded with so-called problem plays. Few are as problematic as Titus Andronicus, the Bard’s first tragedy and generally co-credited to his playwriting mentor, George Peele. It’s an unabashedly gory revenge thriller pitting two rival factions against each other: the general Titus Andronicus, returning to Rome triumphant after years of battle but declining to become the fragile city-state’s new emperor, and the captured Goth queen Tamora, who maneuvers herself from vanquished survivor to empress under the pliable, insecure ruler Saturninus, with the goal of decimating Titus and his entire family.
The challenge for any theater maker is how to approach material that so prominently features murder, rape, and even cannibalism — much of it on stage. Do you play it as tragedy, but with a Grand Guignol flourish, or as Tarantino-esque dark comedy? Director Jesse Berger’s uneven new revival, a Red Bull Theater production at Pershing Square Signature Center, seems to want to have it both ways. The result is a bloody mess, though one that’s surprisingly skimpy with the actual gore.
Patrick Page is an inspired choice as Titus, a proud and stubborn man who’s undone by a series of bad decisions — refusing the emperorship, blocking Saturninus (Mattew Amendt) from marrying his daughter, Lavinia (Olivia Reis), allowing Saturninus to ally with Tamora (Francesca Faridany), and then inexplicably sacrificing one of his own children due to a strict adherence of outdated codes of honor. With his basso profundo voice and deadpan delivery, he brings gravitas and charm to a figure who can be crafty one moment, misguided the next. In the end, though, we never see him actually grapple with the consequences of his mistakes. He’s an antihero with an epiphany-free arc, which shortchanges the tragedy.
While Berger’s revival includes some witty moments and delicious set-pieces, using the trap door several times to clever effect, it sometimes feels as if he directed his cast through a series of private Zoom conversations where no one shared the stage at the same time. Tamora’s two minion sons are a mismatch in performing styles: Jesse Aaronson’s Chiron is effective as a glowering nepo bro, creepily inserting himself into his mother’s schemes, while Adam Langdon plays Demetrius as a high-pitched doofus who speaks in a British accent for no apparent reason (the actor is a Juilliard-trained Brooklyn native). Their scenes are often played for laughs, as when they don black leather S&M gear, masks and all, in an attempt to fool Titus while he’s feigning a Lear-like addled state. (Hat tip to Emily Rebholz for the sharp modern-day costumes and Beowulf Boritt for the simple, column-lined set.) But it’s hard to think of these scions of wickedness as comic foils when they also execute some of the play’s most heinous deeds.
Tamora’s Moorish lover, Aaron (McKinley Belcher III), is another major hiccup. There’s something icky about the villainization of the play’s sole Black character, especially in the modern age. Aaron is unrepentant for his murderous maneuvers on behalf of his Goth Queen, even to the end, but he’s also the only character willing to put his own life on the line for the sake of his progeny. Belcher plays it straight, showing both passion in a forest hookup with Tamora and genuine parental affection when he first encounters his infant son (whom the mother, Tamora, has all too willingly marked for death). But Berger’s production doesn’t dwell on Aaron’s moments of nobility, nor does he allow the character any genuine redemption. In his final words, he’s spouting shibboleths of defiance before being relegated to an offstage death.
Ickier still is the staging of the violent assault on Lavinia in the first act, a horror that unfolds off (and under) the stage but with protracted screams that would be triggering to anyone who’s ever met a woman, let alone is one. It’s staged as a deliberate provocation — and Reis is captivating in subsequent scenes as a shell-shocked survivor — but it also clashes with a production that never interrogates the brutality of its characters with much depth or seriousness. It just feels exploitative. I kept wishing that Berger had pushed his Titus in the opposite direction, going full camp with the cast ultimately wallowing in a wading pool of corn syrup mixed with red dye No. 40. Instead, we’re left with a flawed revival of an unmistakably flawed play, pushing the envelope in all the wrong places. ★★☆☆☆
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Red Bull Theater at Pershing Square Signature Center, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through April 19 for $49 to $129