Titus Andronicus, on this week at Corpus Christi College, is hilarious. Trouble is, I still haven’t worked out if it’s supposed to be. The story is extremely gruesome, and includes murder, rape, hands being chopped off, tongues being cut out, a bit of cannibalism. Did I mention the murders? There are quite a lot. When a play begins with a bowl of blood on the stage, and most of the cast have a red tinge to their clothes already, you know you're in for a dramatic time.
And dramatic it certainly was. There was shrieking, and screaming, and growling, and moaning, and manic shouting. There was quite a lot of manic shouting. Corpus Christi auditorium doesn't really have the best acoustics for manic shouting.
But for me, the incoherent words did not matter, and to be honest the plot didn't really matter either. The gore mattered. There was quite a lot of gore. I don't think violent scenes have ever made me laugh so much. Everything was played so melodramatically, it almost became farce.
There is a line in the play, "Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour". It probably came after a murder. But it made me wonder: was it Shakespeare's intention that the audience should be laughing? Maybe it was a comment on people finding entertainment in violence. Maybe in this production the actors and director were being extremely clever and had turned what is commonly thought of as tragedy into practically slapstick comedy. But, then again, maybe it was just brilliantly bad.
Oh, and Titus and his brother Marcus are women, and there's a midwife with a beard. I have no idea why.
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