Shakespeare’s most ‘splattery’ play
In 2008, Dan Bain performed in an improv mash-up of William Shakespeare and Quentin Tarantino called Pulp William. Audience members would call out a Shakespeare play and Bain and fellow performers Brendon Bennetts and Javier Jarquin would riff on the themes of that work.
As part of his research, Bain learned the basic summaries for all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. But the audience would only call out the most famous four or five plays. ‘‘No one calls out Titus Andronicus,’’ he says. ‘‘No one wants to see an improv riff on King John.’’
Now, 10 years later, Bain is working on Titus Andronicus for his directorial debut on The Court Theatre’s main stage. Bain started as a Court Jester at the theatre in 2003 and has since written and directed many children’s theatre pieces and improv shows. He was appointed associate director of the Court last year.
Titus Andronicus is an unusual choice for his first main stage play. It is one of Shakespeare’s lesserknown works and is extremely violent; perhaps most famous for a scene where the title character murders and bakes a woman’s two children into a pie that she then unwittingly devours.
The play was programmed for the 2017/18 season and Bain was chosen to direct before he became associate director.
‘‘I stuck my hand up because I will have a crack at anything. I really wanted it to be short,’’ he says. ‘‘I feel that often these things can take too long, which can be a bit off putting. Because 80 to 90 per cent of people who come to this will be like: Titus Andronicus. Pies? All everyone knows about Titus is pies.
He has cut about 40 minutes out of the play, which in some stagings can run to about three-and-a-half hours. ‘‘I wanted it to be short because it is a roller-coaster. My theory was that there isn’t a point halfway through a roller-coaster where you get to go a bar and take a break and wonder if you want to get back on the roller-coaster.’’
And how does he handle the violence? ‘‘This is 400 years old and it is outrageously gratuitous. Often for good reason, but there are bits where it feels like just for fun.
‘‘There are about 14 deaths, plus hands off, heads off, tongues out. I’m fascinated to see how people respond to it. I’ve never seen anything splattery here.
‘‘Because there is so much violence, you have to push into that. You can’t hide it away or try and sanitise it. If you sanitise it you make it okay. It should be outrageous. The play was written to commercially compete with bear fighting.’’
But the violence is mixed with comedy. ‘‘The whole thing has been a process of trying to get the tone correct. If it’s too po-faced and dark and grim and violent that is not pleasant and there is not enough in it redemptively to make it meaningful, but if it is too ridiculous and played for laughs, then why do I care about any of this?
‘‘It’s been a big process of nudging it one way or the other and finding where it wants to sit. We don’t sit in gratuitous violence. It is all about the moment being very decisive and moving on to the consequences of that very quickly. It’s sudden and extreme, but then it moves on quite quickly because there are way more sudden and extreme things we need to get to.’’
He also says it feels similar to modern television shows like Game of Thrones or Vikings. ‘‘There are these really richly drawn semi-medieval characters that inflict hideous violence on each other. It’s no Midsummer Night’s Dream.’’
❚ Titus Andronicus will be performed at The Court Theatre from February 17 to March 3. For more information, see courttheatre.org.nz