The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble has a simple mission: to engage our community with Shakespeare by sharing epic, eternal stories with a live audience. Their performance of ‘Titus’ certainly fulfills this brief.
One of the Bard’s bloodiest plays, ‘Titus’ tells the tale of brutal rape, murder and scheming, and is not for PG audiences. Indeed, a recent performance of ‘Titus’ in London left reviewers of major newspapers unconscious (they fainted), so realistic was the carnage and mayhem on stage.
Thankfully, while QSE’s rendition does not shy away from the bloodthirstiness – characters lose heads, hands and tongues a plenty – it very effectively uses red ribbons and cloth to symbolise wounds. There were no swooning audience members in Roma Street Parklands.
The amphitheatre in the parklands is the perfect setting for the play. The audience enters the stage area to music, performed live by members of the ensemble. All the major characters join in, and it’s lovely to see that the actors playing 'Titus', for example, can also handle the clarinet and sing. The audience arranges itself into a semi-circle of chairs, facing out so that the gardens form the backdrop to the performance. This enables the actors to go beyond the confines of the stage, and to use the gardens as part of the setting. It also serves to transport the audience, as the amphitheatre both recalls Rome where the story was set, and what the early performances of Shakespeare may have been like, over four hundred years ago.
All the performances are strong and engaging. The play is long – around two and a half hours with a short intermission for a quick, energizing coffee – so engaging performances are vital. Silvan Rus is a particular standout, playing both the Emperor’s brother and the cuckolding, scheming Moor (yes, there are some racist themes). He interacted with the audience and provided, as did other cast members, brief notes of levity that were very much needed to break up the death and destruction.
