Review: Patrick Page Stars in Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s Campiest Tragedy

I often wonder if the United States is in the early stages of a civil war, with irreconcilable political tribes exacting revenge on their foes using whatever power they accrue. It’s a blood feud on an unprecedented scale, and it may be why Red Bull Theater has chosen to stage Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy set in imperial Rome. Certainly, there’s plenty of blood.

It is shed from the first scene, when Roman general Titus Andronicus (Patrick Page) returns victorious from a war with the Goths, parading in triumph their queen, Tamora (Francesca Faridany), and her brood of sons (Adam Langdon, Jesse Aaronson, and Blair Baker). Despite Tamora’s pleading, Titus orders his son Lucius (Anthony Michael Lopez, martial and aristocratic) to sacrifice her eldest (Baker) at the tomb of his fallen brothers. A spurt of stage blood splatters onto the pristinely gray columns of Beowulf Boritt’s set, which really captures the OCD residing in the heart of every fascist. The red stain remains throughout the following two hours, a reminder of the inciting murder than will spawn many more.

Titus’s stubborn adherence to protocol leads him, at the prompting of his sister, Marcia (Enid Graham), to settle an inheritance dispute over the imperial crown in favor of the previous Caesar’s eldest, Saturninus (Matthew Amendt, the worst Trump son). In return, he promises to make Titus’s daughter, Lavinia (Olivia Reis), his empress. But she is already betrothed to Bassianus (Howard W. Overshown), Saturninus’s rival for the throne. Refusing to accept his little brother’s sloppy seconds, Saturninus instead chooses to wed Tamora, who immediately begins plotting the downfall of the Andronici. The ensuing cycle of violence features brutal rape, severed limbs, live burial, and (most infamously) human remains baked into a pie.

I’ve long considered Titus Andronicus to be Shakespeare’s campiest tragedy, the lurid work of a young playwright seeking attention by indulging the bloodthirst of the Elizabethan audience. It’s like an early John Waters film: Shock is the point. The production that got away was an abortive 1987 mounting for Shakespeare in the Park that director and Ridiculous Theatrical Company founder Charles Ludlam envisioned being led by a wheelchair-bound Vincent Price (Ludlam died of AIDS-related complications that May). Detractors have long considered it better as parody, including Harold Bloom who opined, “I don’t think I would see the play again unless Mel Brooks directed it…or perhaps it could yet be made into a musical.” Jazz hands!

Director Jesse Berger never makes a firm commitment in favor of serious tragedy or tongue-in-cheek comedy, resulting in the uncomfortable cohabitation of gasps and guffaws, a familiar sensation in early imperial America. Emily Rebholz’s severe black-and-white military costumes are the stuff of a fascist nightmare, while Jiyoun Chang produces genuine moments of slasher-film horror in her lighting. But sound designers Adam Wernick and Shannon Slaton knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to underscore the horrific banquet scene with a gentle piano arrangement of “What a Wonderful World.”

And there’s no troupe on earth that could make us buy the Bard’s Act 5 contrivance, in which Tamora tries to trick Titus by disguising herself as “Revenge” and her two remaining sons “Rapine” and “Murder” (Rebholz has fun with this, outfitting them as Goth club kids with accessories I’m sure she swiped from Blood/Love across the street). “Good Lord, how like the empress’ sons they are,” Page scoffs from the balcony, momentarily becoming this play’s Statler and Waldorf.

The tonal whiplash extends to the performances, with Reis enacting one of the most horrifically realistic rape scenes I’ve ever seen. She kicks and screams for her life as she is dragged across the stage by her grotesque assailants (Aaronson and Langdon look like real brothers, and act like an incestuous Beavis and Butt-Head). As their encouraging mother, Faridany is every bit the queen, able to convey maternal affection and hideous malice in one breath.

I suspect many theatergoers will purchase tickets just to hear Shakespeare’s words incanted in Page’s gorgeously resonant voice, which rivals that of Vincent Price in its sinister singularity. Descending to his deepest register, he speaks bereft, “For now I stand as one upon a rock / Environed with a wilderness of sea, / Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, / Expecting ever when some envious surge / Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.” Briefly all gasps and guffaws cease, overtaken by audience silence, Page’s growl from the depths of hell, and (I could swear) the sound of waves crashing upon the rocks.

The other standout performance comes from McKinley Belcher III as Aaron, Tamora’s Moorish lover and henchman. With a thin scar running straight down the center of his face (subtle and effective makeup by Tommy Kurzman) and an unsettlingly toothy smile, Belcher’s Aaron rises above his usual place as a knockoff Marlovian baddie to become a genuinely complex human. He’s a remorseless killer, but with a clear motive, and the love he displays toward his illegitimate child with Tamora constitutes the tenderest relationship in the whole play. Aaron knows it’s not a wonderful world, that hiding beneath the crowns and gowns are vicious animals still governed by the law of the jungle. But his bloodline will survive, no matter whom he must kill to secure it. He’s not some alien from a distant and barbaric past, but a harbinger of the chaotic future that awaits us all.