Titus Andronicus

REIGN DELAY Ledo refuses to be harnessed.

Photo: Michael Brosilow

Charlie Newell’s adaptation of Titus, the revenge drama that’s considered Shakespeare’s earliest, goriest tragedy, turns it into a play-within-a-play. A program insert informs us that the work is set in the semipresent at “a meeting of an elite brotherhood,” and we see Timothy Edward Kane (the ringleader, who will play Titus) and Kevin Gudahl (who will play Titus’s brother Marcus) invite into the tiled-and-mirrored milieu a lineup of blindfolded younger men for a sort of hazing ritual, in which they’ll be assigned roles to read in Titus. The special-guest ladies (Hollis Resnik and Elizabeth Ledo) will portray Tamora and Lavinia. When the “actors” break character and call each other by the real first names of the actors portraying them, we can’t help seeing a parallel with the established Chicago actors welcoming the up-and-comers to the big time.

The lighthearted tone of the “readers” discovering their characters fades as some begin to revel in the back-and-forth violence of the Andronici versus the Roman emperor and the scheming queen of the Goths, while others are horrified by the script’s arc and beg forgiveness for what their characters have done. The deconstruction breaks down when the master of ceremonies, forced to deliver to Titus the heads of his sons, plaintively says, “I think we should stop.” Tamora/Resnick approaches Titus/Kane with a halting, “Tim, I just want to talk to you.” Newell’s interpretation invites multiple readings, but the central message, that of revenge’s power to corrupt innocence, is chillingly enhanced.