Unlike some Shakespeare adaptations doing the rounds, this slimmed-down Titus Andronicus is surprisingly well-cut. Clipping the Bard's most adolescent play to less than an hour like this does take out some of its tragic sweep and grandeur, but what's left behind is coherent and has all limbs intact, rather unlike its characters.However, limpid attempts at physical theatre, some faltering performances and an unconvincing aesthetic hold The Tragedy of Titus back.The production tries to harness a kind of 'street' modernity, with tracksuited Goths (the type of barbarian, not the Cradle of Filth kind) and string-vested Romans often engaging in naffly choreographed fisticuffs. For a play whose core is gruesome and unrestrained violence, these scenes should have been given more thought – the producion's physicality hangs awkwardly between realistic and stylised violence (including Zack Snyder-esque slo-mo swipes), never quite embodying either. This is a big problem.It manifests itself most obviously in the pivotal rape of Lavinia. It turns out that Shakespeare's decision to keep the act off-stage was actually pretty sound. Here it was squirmingly uncomfortable to watch, not so much because of its being a staged rape (which would also be uncomfortable to watch, but in a different way), but because it was half-heartedly done. Lavinia writhes in her underwear and is thrown around in a kind of dance which is neither strident nor energetic enough to symbolise rape, and certainly not brutal enough to represent it more straightforwardly.Surrounding the lacklustre physicality are unsubtle performances, which oscillate between suppressed and unsuppressed anger. Lavinia is especially obnoxious and grating, delivering her plea for mercy to Tamora like it's abuse and ruining the pathos of her ravishment. The rest of the cast fall follow suit with lines equally misunderstood, though Lucius Andronicus (who has here also absorbed the part of Marcus) does do rather well.This is a play which failed at quite an early level, but underneath there is at least a functional adaptation of the script for somebody else to perform in future.
