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Kabuki - Titus
- based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
Adapter - Francis Hagan
Directors - Scott Palmer and Francis Hagan
Set Designer - Sarah Pauley
Costume Designer - Polly Lister
Musicians - Ruth Morely (Flute) and Iain Sandiland (Percussion)
Company - Glasgow Rep Company
Venue & dates- Kibble Place Glasgow Botanics on various days
between 28 June & 14 June 2002 at 11 :30pm
Run Time - 45 minutes no interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Scoular's magnificient Lavina
In the dark, in the tropical foliage of the the Kibble Place, Glasgow
Rep has take the entrails of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and let us
look on them for the heart of it. It's starkly lit, accompanied by haunting,
arresting Japanese style music. From the beginning when Titus's brother
Marcus, Paul Gillingwater, enters through the audience, we are
confronted by a playing style foreign but powerfully fitting to this awesome
tale.
Before this dramatisation begins, in the original play Titus returns
from conquering Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, bringing her and her sons
to Rome. There she is not killed but marries the Emperor, while her sons
are freed. When this the Kabuki - Titus begins Marcus tells us of this
history and greets his triumphant brother Titus, in which Kabuki style
not withstanding Francis Hagan gives an over engineered performance.
Gillingwater's Marcus is better honed, projecting a reality rather
than trying to enforce one, whilst still retaining the Kabuki essence.
Marcus brings Titus to see his daughter Lavina who has been savaged by
Tamora's sons, her honour, her tongue and hands severed from her body.
It is she this dramatisation centres on and Johanne Scoular is
extraordinary in the role, as wordless she moves her bloodied, wrecked
body, more eloquent than mere words, drawing us into the searing troubling
awfullness of this tale where an innocent suffers extreme violation which
nothing, nothing on this earth can put right. Her movements still you
till your blood runs cold in your contracting veins. Polly Lister has
created a costume of profound beauty for Lavina capturing the ghastly
and heroic. Above all it's clear in Scoular's magnificient Lavina that
a fine young physical actor indeed is here revealed.
© Thelma Good 13 June 2002
Other Glasgow Rep Company Productions
As You
Like It Summer 2002
The Tempest
Summer 2002
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