London, Day 8: Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus is widely considered to be one of Shakespeare's worst plays. We went to see it Tuesday night at Shakespeare's Globe Theater, a modern reproduction of the theater where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed.

The theater is round, with seating to the sides of the stage as well as the front. It is open-air, though the stage and the seats are covered. Those standing in the yard--the groundlings--get wet. Much of the play was performed in Elizabethan style, although the women were in fact played by women, not boys. The actors were enthusiastic, and the comedy aspects were played up, even though the play is a tragedy.

One of the interesting aspects of the play was being a groundling. While it was nice to have a place to sit, especially during the rain, I enjoyed getting up from my seat and walking down to the stage. The actors often used the area around the stage and interacted a bit with the audience. Mostly, they just pushed through the crowd. There was no directional lighting in the Globe--originally, the plays were performed in the afternoon because the highly flammable theater could not be safely lit--so the audience was clearly visible. My favorite part of being a groundling was doing a bit of interaction of my own. Apparently Elizabethan audiences used to throw things onto the stage. This may be the origin of the phrase "peanut gallery." Well, I didn't have any peanuts to throw, so during intermission, I grabbed a few brochures. When one of the bad guy characters came near my position at the side of the stage (he was just menacing one of the minor characters near the curtain and wasn't the center of the action), I participated in true Elizabethan fashion by tossing a wad of paper at him. He grinned and threw it back at me.

My professors, who were standing nearby, were extremely amused. So apparently were the other students, who were delighted to discover after the play that the thrower was one of their classmates.

While Titus Andronicus is technically a tragedy, with nearly all of the main characters dying in the blood-bathed fifth act, the actors played up the comedic aspects. The titular character goes quite convincingly mad (though it's clear to the audience that he's faking), one of the evil characters does an excellent job revelling in his vileness, and the emperor Saturninus is a hilariously childish weakling. Also, the bad guys sang "Hey, Saturninus" to the tune of "Hey Baby." And while several characters lose body parts, the play wasn't half as gory as the movie Titus which we watched before we left. In particular, the character Lavinia, who is raped and has her hands cut off and her tongue removed to prevent her from identifying her attackers, is not half as horrible-looking as she was in the movie. I think it was the twigs she was given in place of hands that made the movie version so disturbing.

Anyhow, the actors did a wonderful job. Afterward, I gave them a hand.