Summary 
Solemn black-box modernization sets the tragedy in winter among the Fascists of Italy in the days before World War Two. Characters sleepwalk in trudging enervation throughout the dismal and dreary production, at some moments erupting with over-the-top hysterics. Few highlights, among them a heartbreaking Lavinia, and an overall disappointment.
Design
Directed by Richard Rose. Set by Teresa Przybylski. Costumes by Charlotte Dean. Lights by Grame Thomson. Sound by Todd Charlton.
Cast
James Blendick (Titus Andronicus), Peter Hutt (Marcus Andronicus), Evan Buliung (Lucius Andronicus), Marion Day (Lavinia), Nicolas Van Burek (Publius Andronicus), Scott Wentworth (Saturninus), Timothy Askew (Bassianus), Diane D'Aquila (Tamora), Paul Dunn (Chiron), Xuan Fraser (Aaron).
Analysis
Richard Rose modernizes Titus Andronicus to the Fascist Italy of the 1930s with its crisply uniformed, armed, and jack-booted Nazi soldiers. Set during a bleak winter, the production is deadly serious and somber in tone - as well as languidly paced and virtually unedited - with Rose apparently pursuing more of an elegiac melancholy effect rather than tragic bombast. The sparse black-box production begins with literal funereal gloom at the Andronicus family tomb, with a bier draped in gray cloth before black benches serving as pews. A black chair, fitted with a microphone for public testimonials, is set up beside the casket, and the entire stage is eerily lit with shafts of light shooting from beneath wooden slats. Monastic tones from Verdi's "Requiem" resonate in the background, the overall mood verging on the oppressive.
James Blendick, a portly gentleman with a full head of white hair, plays an older-than-typical Titus with a dissipated air: stoic and authoritarian but world-weary and jaded. Blendick's Titus wears a general's heavily-medaled dress uniform with officer's cap and black-strapped sidearm, moving slowly or slumping as with a great emotional burden, probably an excess of guilt. Blendick's Titus makes startling and sometimes unnerving jumps to frenetic shouting and histrionics as if in violent spasms. The effect is initially jarring but later in the production plays as unintentional comedy, and Rose would have been better served providing Titus the license for some kind of emotional arc. In this production, Titus begins and ends with an expressionless reserve, passing from glory to humiliation and then to alienation and madness with just a few primal screams along the way.
Titus is surrounded with a parade of attendants and underling soldiers - in busy but awkward staging - all attired similarly in belted gray Nazi army uniforms, and all with the same grave sullenness in look, manner, and speech. Scott Wentworth as Saturninus provides visual interest with his rigid imitation of Benito Mussolini: he poses stiffly, his head high and his chin thrust out, sometimes with his arms folded across his chest or with his hands on his hips, and he wears a white military jacket heavy with medals and ribbons. His storm trooper-like attendants, attired in black military fatigues, crowd the stage menacingly, moving in and among Roman politicians and senators who wear business suits and formal wear in gray and black, with vests, gloves, and striped neck ties.
Rose's austere approach - all the overwhelming solemnity, languid movements, and grave expressions - provide a listless atmosphere for the production, with one notable exception. Marion Day plays Lavinia with a haunting beauty, hunched and vulnerable in an oversized raincoat and a floppy hat. With shaggy short black hair and wounded dark eyes, she is an increasingly heartbreaking vision of a victim continually victimized and helpless. A pair of other supporting characterizations stand out, but not with the devastation of the waif-like Lavinia: a hard-edged Tamora - her speech clipped and terse like a knife's blade - appears initially in a paramilitary uniform, but with feminine fur cuffs and collar, plus a sassy fur beret, and she later slinks and connives in a wispy silk blouse and crimson-red lounging robe; and Aaron the Moor is a graciously smiling con-man in a long overcoat with loose-fitting striped silk pants.
Rose's despondent tragedy suffers from unintentional moments of comedy, such as the suddenly crazed Titus' stabbing of a housefly in 3.2 or his appearance - after two hours of dignified moping - as a wild-eyed pie-baker in a floppy chef's hat. The unruly swings of thematic direction undercut each other: the histrionic tragedy comes across as forced and comical, and the plodding gloominess fails to entertain. For example, Titus does not just stab Mutius, he physically overwhelms the younger man - an awkward maneuver for someone of Blendick's age and size - then kills him by banging his head against the stage floor, and when he first sets eyes upon the tragically mutilated Lavinia, he not only expresses deep sorrow but revulsion - by choking back vomit - as well as a need for vengeance by falling to his knees and screaming in rage. The over-emoted moments are void of tragic depth because they lack development. Titus' more cold-blooded moments fare better because they rise from an established on-stage characterization. Chilling in his nonchalance and deliberateness of motion, Titus almost casually snaps the neck of the willing (and nearly grateful) Lavinia, and after another woefully comical tragic moment - all the guests served human pies (except the intended victim) rush gagging from the table, stifling the need to vomit - Titus casually slits the throat of his rival, Tamora, doing so calmly and without emotion.
With such a gifted director as Rose and such disturbingly graphic material, there must be endless staging possibilities, especially considering the 1930s Fascism conceit, but with such sluggish and solemn exposition, this Titus Andronicus is a somnambulistic disappointment, too histrionic to be good tragedy, and at the same time too enervated to be good drama.