“Titus Andronicus” might as well be called “Shakespeare’s Rodney Dangerfield” as, out of all the bard’s known plays, it is perhaps the least respected. It is so bloody that for many, many decades it was considered unproducible. It involves multiple rapes and murders, dismemberment, torture, canibalism (!), and, on top of all that, lacks the poetry and close construction of Shakespeare’s other work.
In fact, until recently it was almost universally regarded as Shakespeare’s “worst” play. So much so, that many scholars refused to believe that Shakespeare had anything to do with it at all, or, at best, was only a co-writer who didn’t contribute much. Some critics have concluded that “Titus” must be an early play, over-influenced by other bloody tragedies of the Elizabethan theatre. It’s faults, they argue, are those of a beginner.
But no less a critic than Harold Bloom (alright, Bloom’s contorversial, I’ll admit) argued that perhaps “Titus Andronicus” was intended as parody: a very black comedy that goes overboard with the violence, even by Elizabethan standards, to make us laugh. This view has been accepted by quite a few directors, and productions of “Titus” in recent years have often been played for laughs. Although, perhaps not so much since the ascendancy of the “me too” movement. A comical version, which featured Titus serving up his enemies to their mother at a down home barbecue, wearing a chef’s hat and a cute apron, and having the time of his life, was a great success a decade or so at Cal Shakes, featuring an over-the-top performance by James Carpenter in the lead.
Taylor Mac has gone even further. Taking the approach that Titus is, indeed, a dark comedy, Judy (Mac’s preferred pronoun) imagines a sequel that is even darker, deeper, more scatological and vastly funnier than Shakespeare’s play. At least, in terms of this play, Mac out Shakespeares Shakespeare.
Mac’s sequel to Titus Andronicus imagines two servants cleaning up the bodies after the gory denoument. It’s a mess alright. How is it even possible to go on about your jog in the face of such madness and disgust?
For Gary (played by the always brilliant Jomar Tagatec), the answer is to be a clown. Not just a clown, he hopes, but ultimately a court fool, jester to kings, a philosopher who knows how to laugh. Of course, in light of of the task at hand, one is forced to ask, “What the hell is so funny about kings?”
That is the viewpoint of Gary’s supervisor, Janice, who has been a maid for years and cleaned up her share of massacres. She is a Goddess of death, both practical yet funny. Matt Standby brings her to life in a performance conceived in drag heaven.
Amongst an endless stream of fart jokes, puppetry, obscene penis gags, a sprinkling of blank and rhymed verse, a few dances, and a whole lot of schtick, Janice’s philosophical reflections make this apocalypse pop with intellectual and political bravado.
In an astonishing bit of poetic justice, the play also includes the ironic symbolic rebirth of a midwife (played with excellence by Regina Morones) from the bottom of a pile of stinking corpses.
The design team for this production has to rise to the occasion (pun intended – you’ll see what I mean) and offer uniformly excellent work, but Ray Archie’s sound design deserves to be trumpeted indeed.
Kings and governments will come and go, and the survivors of their accesses will clean up time after time, maintaining humor and perspective at the bottom of the human pile and therein lies hope and that’s the point of the laughter. Revolutions revolve endlessly, but hope and laughter are also eternal and keep us human in the face of the unfaceable.
“Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” continues through October 1, 2023. For further information click here.*
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Rating: ***** (For an explanation of Theatrestorm’s rating scale, click here.)
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“Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” by Taylor Mac. Director: Emilie Whelan. Scenic Designer: Carlos Aceves. Props Designer: Martha Powell. Costume Designer: Marina Polokoff. Lighting Designer: Kevn Myrick. Sound Designer: Ray Archie.
Cast:
Carol: Regina Morones. Gary: Jomar Tagatac. Janice: Matt Standley.
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