British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database
Titus Andronicus (2012): Hiraeth Artistic Productions
PRINCIPAL CAST: Rosalind Blesses (Tamora); David Vaughan Knight (Titus); Maya Thomas (Lavinia).
The production originally played at the Etcetera Theatre, London in October 2012. It was subsequently revived with largely the same cast and played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2013 and the Arcola Theatre, London in October 2013.
"Zoe Ford directs this wild version - replacing Roman togas with the anarchic uniform of 1980s post-punk London. Her tattooed skinheads, in ripped denim and combat boots, make perfect sense of the play, plunging us into a vicious turf war between extremist gangs - led by Titus and his enemy Queen Tamora. And Nadia Malik's stripped stage makes clever use of intimidating punk culture, as the reviled Emporer Saturninus lounges on his sofa-throne surrounded by expletive heavy graffiti and discarded bricks." ~ Lisa Paul, Time Out London, 17 May 2012, in Theatre Record 2012, Issue 10
"The setting is a This is England-type slice of the 1980s, all skin heads, DMs and Union flags, and Ford sticks to her ambitious vision with notably wholehearted commitment. The one downside to this slickly-edited, high-energy production is the verse-speaking, which is all over the place. Some degree of clarity and comprehensibility is perforce lost through this, as is any meaningful purchase on that slippery villain Aaron." ~ Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 14 October 2013
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- British Black and Asian Shakespeare Database by the University of Warwick, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council 2012-2015, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. See full copyright statement.