"Titus' in New York, "Carnage' on screen

'Tis the season to be bloody. At least that's how they're celebrating it on the spectacularly splattered stage of New York's Public Theatre this week, where Titus Andronicus & Co. are spilling their guts out. There's rape, murder, incest, dismembering, cannibalism— you name it.

It's the first time I've seen this early Shakespeare play (his first tragedy, finished in 1593), and I found myself wondering what in the world inspired the Bard to write such a gore-fest. Scholars blame the competition from his contemporaries, who were breaking the box office with their popular revenge tragedies.

Anyway, I'm glad I saw Titus. Trust me, I'll never complain about Martin Scorsese (Scarface, Goodfellas) or Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) again. Shakespeare got there first, and has it all over today's film directors when it comes to violence and gore. Indeed, Titus Andronicus is so outrageously over the top that it's actually entertaining.

By that I mean that the stagecraft concocted by director Michael Sexton with his talented design team is ingenious. With a shoestring budget, this production has transformed the Anspacher Theatre at the Public into an elaborate abattoir.

Gang rape

At the play's opening, the triumphant Titus, returning home to Rome from a victory over the Goths, plunges headlong into a local power struggle. Within minutes of the play's opening, in a fit of pique over the abduction of his daughter, Titus accidentally kills his own son. But that's nothing compared to what follows.

The barbaric Goth queen Tamora, a war prize now married to the Roman emperor, takes vengeance for her sons slain by Titus, and a bloodletting cycle ensues. Tamora's remaining sons capture Titus's daughter Lavinia, rape her, cut off her hands and slice off her tongue. Next, Titus agrees to cut off his own hand in exchange for two of his sons who've been captured.

Is this getting too complicated to follow? Don't even try. Just rest assured that it's a bloody mess.

Move over, Lady Macbeth

By Act II, a good many limbless characters are lumbering around the stage, wreaking havoc, spilling anybody's bodily fluid they can. The sound of Titus's manic laughter (what else can he do, you might ask) rings true, as more and more corpses litter the stage floor. By comparison, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Martin McDonagh's bloody black comedy about the Irish Republican Army, looks like a tea party.

According to the program notes, the Public chose Titus for the actor Jay O. Saunders, whose regal stature seems a perfect fit. He plays the role with humor and heart, providing a human dimension to all the horror.

For me, however, the fascination of this play lies in the role of the Goth queen Tamora, next to whom Lady Macbeth and Clytemnestra seem like Mary Poppins. As played here with delicious, malicious glee by Stephanie Roth Haberle, Tamora dances around the stage, exultant until the end, when she realizes that the meat pie her host Titus has just served her for supper consists of the entrails of her sons.

(By all means add Tamora to my recent BSR essay about violent women seeking revenge on the stage. Tamora is an über-villainess, one you'll love to hate.)

Christmas question

The boldness, daring and risk-taking of this Titus stands out in sharp contrast this season to the Public's gimmicky Love's Labor's Lost and the colorless King Lear (no fault of Sam Waterston, who fought valiantly in the title role to bring passion to an otherwise unfocused production).

Watching all this bloodfest makes you wonder why, of the numerous Shakespeare productions in New York and London this year, the most popular have been violent (a Titus, two King Lears, a Julius Caesar and three Macbeths). While you're pondering the question, enjoy your holiday, and avoid Christmas pies.

From Paris to Brooklyn

But if violence is still your taste, another heaping serving is on its way. Carnage, the film adaptation of Yazmina Reza's excellent 2008 play, God of Carnage, opened last week in New York movie theaters, and its violence feels even more intense than that of Titus, simply because it's too close for comfort.

Instead of ancient Rome, director Roman Polanski sets the film in contemporary Brooklyn (the play's original locale was Paris). Polanski, no stranger to violence himself, directs this dangerous drawing room comedy of manners with a wicked awareness that hot blood boils beneath the thin skin of social propriety.

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (affluent urban couple #1) have invited Nancy and Alan Cowan (affluent urban couple #2) to their comfortable apartment to discuss a recent dispute between their respective 11-year olds. (One boy has hit the other with a stick on the playground and knocked out a few of his teeth). For the first few minutes, the couples attempt to deal with the situation with reason and civility.

That could be us

But that restraint soon unravels, and so do the four characters, as their social masks are quickly stripped away, revealing the same kind of cruel, vicious behavior displayed by their children. The apartment becomes the scene of their own playground brawl, as the couples lose control and engage in brutal name-calling, physical violence and other shocking shenanigans. As in Titus, it's another kind of abattoir, and the walls are splattered plentifully.

And yet the brilliance of Reza's black comedy is that we laugh "“ at her characters (splendidly portrayed by Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz) as well as their capacity for carnage. We also cringe"“ after all, they could be the couples next door, or maybe even ourselves.

Stoppard's explanation

So why does violence continue to enjoy such popularity on stage and screen? Tom Stoppard explains it in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, when the Player King describes the essence of good entertainment: "I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory"“ they're all blood, you see."

To which Guildenstern replies: "Is that what people want?"

Never mind. Don't ponder that question. It's the holidays. Maybe we should see The Nutcracker instead.♦


To read another review of Carnage by Robert Zaller, click here.