Titus Andronicus
Hampstead Theatre, London
★★★★★

IT’s a blood bath!

Unspeakable torture, severed hands and tongues, dismembered bodies, a mother’s sons baked in a pie and fed to her, people buried alive in a mass grave, butchered body parts gifted to relatives in clear plastic bags… oh and rape, planned in advance and executed. All this and more, played out in the name of revenge on a nightly basis in one genteel corner of north-west London. What is the world coming to?

Well, maybe that’s the point, as warfare on our daily news in the modern era will testify.

Titus Andronicus is an RSC production, directed with unerring focus by the esteemed Max Webster. It was written by Shakespeare aged twenty-something and — despite being set supposedly in the Roman empire, while cashing in on the late 16th century penchant for gory drama — feels so contemporary it could well have emerged from the pen of a Martin McDonagh, although the cascade of fabulous poetry that accompanies the action can be the work only of the Bard.

The eponymous Titus has been a general in the Roman army and returns to Rome with a group of captured Goths, including Tamora whose son he has mercilessly killed. From here starts a chain of events that could mirror the Middle East today. And Shakespeare startles with every turn.

But this production is more than a simple catalogue of ghastliness. And amazingly, none of the abuse — though graphic — seems gratuitous, nor provides eye candy for the pervert.

Instead, it brings us a world so devoid of pity that chaos ensues, and so lost that no-one is the winner. It becomes almost comedic in its horror.  

Features coalesce to make for excellent theatre: the cold stone of the apron stage with its ever-present charnel house under foot; the vivid blood that stains it; the chilling screams offstage and the discordant music; the pent-up, jagged dance movements as the Goths and the Romans stoke up revenge; the distorted, angular, reptilian shapes of the dead as they slink from the ground to keep vengeance alive; the modern, sombre clothing of the characters — coloured only by blood. And then of course the ensemble cast.

John Hodgkinson (a recent Falstaff for the RSC) replaces Simon Russell Beale as Titus. Tall and imposing, he carries the role with aplomb, commandeering our compassion even as he spins in a whirlwind of violence. And outstanding performances too come from Wendy Kweh as Goth Tamora and Ken Nwosu as Aaron the Moor, to name but two.

What is daring in this show is the unequivocal hostility between the different racial groups, made bravely explicit through ethnicity-conscious casting, as well as through Shakespeare’s original text. This, perhaps, above all else touches a raw nerve in our time.

And all humane philosophy is absent. The Christianity of Shakespeare’s world turned on its head when Aaron declaims: “If one good thing in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.”

A fearsome parable for our time.  

Runs until October 11. Box office: (020) 7722-9301, www.hampsteadtheatre.com.