Max Webster’s take on Titus Andronicus for the Royal Shakespeare Company is a blood-drenched triumph. This is a production that dares to draw laughter from horror, finds nuance in revenge, and extracts psychological depth from the play often dismissed as Shakespeare’s crude early tragedy. With razor-sharp vision, exquisite design, and a cast on blistering form, this Titus both shocks and dazzles.
Returning to the RSC for the first time in years, Simon Russell Beale gives a mesmerising performance in the title role. Beale’s Titus is at once noble and pitiable, brutal and broken – a man spiralling into madness while clinging to rituals and honour that have long since lost their meaning. It’s a role that could easily tip into grotesque melodrama, but Beale plays it with extraordinary sensitivity and restraint, teasing out moments of mordant humour that are both shocking and oddly moving. In lesser hands, lines might fall flat or feel overwrought. Here, they pierce like daggers, laced with wit and weary devastation.
The production leans confidently into the play’s potential for dark comedy, a directorial choice that pays off in spades. Titus baking Tamora’s sons into a pie should be the stuff of nightmare, and it is – but it’s also presented with such twisted theatricality and knowing humour that the audience is left both horrified and awkward with laughter. Webster’s control of tone is masterful: just as we’re lulled into chuckling discomfort, the emotional hammer falls, reminding us of the deep and irreparable trauma beneath the satire.
The production’s breakout star is Natey Jones as Aaron. It is a performance of rare venom and charisma. Aaron is no pantomime villain here; Jones fills every monologue with righteous fury and psychological nuance. He growls his lines through clenched teeth, each word soaked in bitterness, scorn and deadly pride. Whether relishing his own cruelty or defiantly asserting his identity against Roman hypocrisy, he dominates the stage. Aaron’s final defiant refusal to repent – “If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul” – lands like a punch to the gut, its delivery snarling, proud, unflinching.
Joshua James plays Saturninus with swaggering, campy arrogance, offering the perfect foil to Beale’s dignity and restraint. James injects the role with smarmy entitlement and an oily, boy-king petulance that is, at times, uncomfortably contemporary. Wendy Kweh’s Tamora, meanwhile, is all elegant menace – gliding across the stage like a serpent, her cruelty as calculated as it is vicious. She relishes Tamora’s theatricality.
Letty Thomas as Lavinia gives a performance of remarkable physical and emotional control. Her transformation – from radiant daughter to mutilated ghost of herself – is handled with grace and raw power. Her silent suffering becomes a visual and moral centre to the production, with her eventual vengeance carrying a terrible weight.
Joanna Scotcher’s set is an industrial marvel: looming above the stage is a mechanical conveyor system from which chains hang, ready to bear bodies, weapons, or other instruments of torment. It’s an unsettling, ever-present reminder of violence as spectacle. The space shifts fluidly from battlefield to banquet hall to tomb, its stripped-back brutality underpinned by brilliant lighting design from Lee Curran. The lighting does much of the heavy lifting in the show’s stylised violence – sword thrusts happen from a distance, yet a flash of light and a spurt of blood signals the act with disturbing clarity. It’s a clever, elegant solution to presenting gore without lapsing into gratuitousness.
Indeed, one of the most impressive achievements of this Titus is how sparing it is with its bloodshed. For all the reputation of the play as Shakespeare’s most violent, Webster’s production exercises immense control. By holding back on explicit blood early on, the final acts become far more impactful. When the violence comes, it is stylised, theatrical, and oddly beautiful. The audience is made to feel complicit in the spectacle, our gasps and laughter colliding in uncomfortable harmony.
Costume design is equally meticulous. The Goths make a bold entrance in striking blue garments, a visual identity that gradually permeates the stage as their power grows. This design choice culminates in Saturninus appearing in a gloriously over-the-top blue fur coat, draped in the colour of his conquerors – a subtle but clever nod to the play’s commentary on power and assimilation. The costumes throughout marry contemporary edge with classical motifs, never feeling forced or gimmicky.
Sound design by Tingying Dong is a standout feature. The gothic soundscape – built from metallic rattles, groans, and echoing screams – creates a constant undercurrent of unease. Composer Matthew Herbert’s score is minimal and unsettling, rising and falling with the rhythm of the violence and the psychology of the characters. The moments of silence are equally potent, leaving the audience stranded in a shared breath of anticipation.
There are a few moments when sightlines are frustratingly compromised, particularly when actors stand in the galleyways. In a production where every gesture, every reaction matters, missing a key look or movement is a small, but noticeable, flaw. Still, this is a minor quibble in a staging that otherwise uses the Swan Theatre’s intimacy to stunning effect.
This Titus Andronicus is a masterclass in theatrical risk-taking. Max Webster and his team have reimagined one of Shakespeare’s most brutal works as a dark, psychological carnival of vengeance and grief, anchored by a towering performance from Simon Russell Beale and an exceptional supporting cast. With exquisite design, macabre humour, and a pulsating emotional core, it’s not just one of the best Shakespeare productions of the year – it’s one of the most gripping nights you’ll spend in the theatre.
Titus Andronicus plays at the Swan Theatre until 7th June 2025. Tickets available here.
Photography throughout from Marc Brenner.
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