Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * ½
Cast: Sam Liu, Lauren Fitzpatrick, Karl Falconer, Jason Carragher, Alexander Bollands, Lowell Carragher, Russell Carragher, Matilda Swinney, Alexandra Walker, Siobhan Crinson, Sam Wright, Aimee Marnell, Elena Stephenson, Agata Jarosz, Con O’Neill, Justine Williams, Laura Ryan, Sarah Dwyer.
Notoriously difficult to stage, Titus Andronicus is perhaps a Shakespeare play that doesn’t get the good press it deserves. Since critics and detractors got their teeth into analysing the play and its gore fest like admiration, it has been routinely ridiculed and slammed, so much so that it wasn’t until the very latter part of the 20th Century that it was to be performed uncut for the first time. Things may be turning for the fledgling Shakespeare play, the first to be written by the most brilliant of writers is getting popular, perhaps befitting the modern and in some cases brutal times that audiences find themselves in.
Hot on the heels of their superb version of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice which was performed in Liverpool over the festive period, Purplecoat Productions take on the mammoth task of bring Shakespeare’s play of violence, un-remitting revenge and love and giving it room to breathe on the Unity Theatre stage. It is difficult for its incompressible use of violence, of unceasing events that don’t allow the audience, until the very end, a chance to take stock of what they are seeing. Only at the end is the assembled crowd allowed any type of light relief and even then it is with the darkest sense of humour possible.
To take on this play would test any company to the limit and for the majority of the performance; the cast of Titus Andronicus were admirably good at achieving the desired effect of unsettling everyone in the theatre. With some good special effects and incredible performances, such as Elena Stephenson as the bitter and conniving Aaron, Jason Carragher as Marcus and Matilda Swinney as the vengeful Queen of the Goths, the play was interesting and did more than enough to convince that it and the team behind Purplecoat Productions were right to perform their adaption and to take it forward, that is their right for the incredible hard work they put into it.
Purplecoat deserve praise for their loyalty to the stage in trying times for smaller companies and it was with a great pleasure to welcome them back to a Liverpool theatre once again.
Ian D. Hall.