From 'New' Europe to Thug Brittania: Titus Redivivus

In 2002, Deborah Willis was arguing that ‘[t]he dramatic rise
in favour of Titus Andronicus among critics and directors –
perhaps not coincidentally – closely paralleled the growth
of feminist Shakespeare criticism’, which focused the
play’s concerns on ‘its imagery of womb, tomb, and pit.’
(Shakespeare Quarterly, 53.1:22). Notwithstanding the
impact of this rise on the return of the play, my approach
aims to refocus the attention Titus Andronicus has received
on the stage recently. My exploration of Shakespeare’s
play as aware of the new geopolitical realities, the shifting
physical and mental borders of the enlarged European
Union, looks at its engagement with issues of migration,
globalization, rising nationalism and xenophobia.
It is not coincidental, I will argue, that Shakespeare’s gory
tragedy of revenge has lately shared the stage in the UK
with its contemporary, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy
(Lazarus Theatre Company), while on the continent, it has
appeared alongside its twentieth-century counterpart,
Heiner Müller’s Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome:
A Shakespeare Commentary.
More coincidental, perhaps, is the fact that the both
productions which make the focus of this paper –
TeatrPolski in Wrocław and Staatsschauspiel Dresden,
directed by Jan Klata (20132) and Hiraeth Artistic
Productions, directed by Zoé Ford (2013) -- chose historic
moments of national(ist) tension to explore identity, prize
open the violent conflict between Romans and Goths and
1980s music to help carry the plot – albeit in different
measures and to different ends.