Anybody Want a Piece of Pie?

I was going to insert a Hannibal joke here, but I'm better than that. Actual screenshot from the film.

There’s a part very early in the 1999 film Shakespeare in Love with William Shakespeare is talking to a street urchin playing with mice named John Webster. While they’re talking, John Webster mentions that he really enjoyed one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays, Titus Andronicus. 

This is a little in-joke in the world of Theatre. John Webster is a famous Jacobean playwright known for his extremely bloody and violent plays... and thus probably would enjoy something like Titus Andronicus. And the Saw movies. He’d find those hilarious.

For the past two days I have talked about Shakespearean adaptations that have taken plays and updated them for modern audiences, which included the dialogue. Today I’m going to talk about one of the more disturbing Shakespearean plays that was adapted, none of the dialogue changed and took full advantage of “adaptation” part of  William Shakespeare. 

Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by Julie Taymor takes the idea of an adaptation and runs with it, while using the dialogue from the original play and creating a world where this play can actually exist.

I’ve discussed Titus Andronicus several times on this blog, but never really took the time to talk about what it was all about. They’re from New Jersey and were formed in 2005 who’s first album, The Airing of Grievances... wait. Nope, that’s the band. My bad.

Titus Andronicus was one of William Shakespeare’s first plays, and it’s believed that it was written to capitalize on the popularity of bloody revenge plays. It is actually one of his bloodiest and most graphically violent plays with most of the blood and gore happening on stage. That’s saying something coming from a man that killed a kid in one play, and then randomly had another character killed off stage by a bear. It was popular in it’s day, then it lost popularity as people lost a taste of graphic violence, but has started to earn back respect thanks to works like Titus. 

The play is a revenge cycle about a fictional general named Titus Andronicus (because duh, but he did fool us with the whole Ciaus Marius/Coriolanus thing) who seeks revenge against Tamora, Queen of the Goths during the latter days of the Roman Empire. The Emperor has died and his two sons are fighting for the throne, when Titus comes home with prisoners, including Tamora and her three sons. You see, despite the fact that the Emperor had kids, everyone wants Titus to be the new Emperor. He refuses and kills one of Tamora’s kids, then refuses the throne. Later, one of the Emperor’s kids, Saturninus marries Tamora, despite the fact that he said he wanted to marry Lavinia, Titus’ daughter. She had been engaged to the other son Bassianus, and wanted to refuse, so everyone gets accused of treason, and it’s Tamora who says to pardon them all.

Later, Aaron, Tamora’s son and secret lover (yep.) convinces his brothers to go kill Bassianus, then rape Lavinia, cutting off her hands and her tongue. 

Did I mention this play had strong, graphic violence? and that Julie Taymore doesn’t shy away from it? Good. Because she doesn’t

Where was I? Aaron the secret son/lover frames Titus’ kids for the killing, and the rape, Tamora gives birth to Aaron’s kid (Aaron kills the nurse who delivered the infant) Titus pretends to go insane, then Tamora and the two sons who raped Lavina dress up as ghosts to play into his madness. Turns out he was faking the madness thing (like Hamlet!) , kills the sons, bakes them into a pie and serves it to Tamora, then Titus kills his own daughter. Titus kills Tamora, Saturnius kills Titus, then Lucius (Titus’ oldest kid) kills Saturnius and is named Emperor, mostly because everyone else is dead (Or all up in chalk, as Thug Notes would say.) Aaron is then buried alive up to his neck and left to starve to death, giving one of the best/most disturbing speeches in Shakespearean history where he laments that he just wishes he could have done more evil. (This is where Shakespeare leaves us. In Julie Taymor’s version, Lucius adopts the infant son of Aaron and Tamora. Well. The movie. In the play she originally directed, he dies too because why not?)

Titus pretty much follows this, but Titus gets to wear a pretty rockin’ chef’s outfit while serving up the pies.

Like I said, this is a pretty disturbing play, and there’s a reason you hear about Macbeth, Hamlet, or King Lear, and not about this one when talking about tragedies. Your other fun detail about this is that while Shakespeare’s other works about Rome, such as: Julius Caesar, Corolanius, and Anthony and Cleopatra, this is not based at least partly on a real Emperor, nor does it specify a time other than “The End of the Roman Empire.” Julie Taymor really plays with this timelessness aspect, and it works in setting a believable play that takes place in a real world, but doesn’t.

Titus has no real sense of time. Swords are used next to pistols. Microphones are used to talk to groups of people in togas. Motorcycles and horses. It works because this play is so dis jointed, so many strange things happen in it, this sort of leads everyone into a fantastical land where you can’t question it. Rome was brutal. Not serving your enemy’s kids a pie brutal. (Or maybe it was. We need to be in the right mindset to accept it, though. The soundtrack can go back and forth between epic and Jazzy. This movie makes everything feel out of place.

Which I feel, is necessary for a play like this. Nothing is in it’s place. Remember, I talk often about the fact that while we revere a lot of Shakespeare’s work, a lot of what he does is parody, including parody styles of the time. The Bloody Revenge Tragedy was extremely popular back in his day. This isn’t just a Bloody Revenge Tragedy. This is THE BLOODY REVENGE TRAGEDY. Julie Taymore, through her use of anachronisms and direction, plays on the idea that maybe this was a parody of revenge tragedies of the day. There’s only so much you can inject into a play where one of the main characters just wishes he could do more evil.

Unlike the other two movies I’ve talked about, this one did not do too well int he box office or with critics. O was at least liked by critics. Ten Things I hate About You is a beloved movie I’m going to go watch again right now. But this isn’t an easy movie to watch, not by any stretch of the imagination. I would recommend true fans of Shakespeare to check it out at some point. And if you’re going to watch a version of Titus Andronicus, make it this one. I’m a huge mark for Patrick Stewart, so I love his version of Macbeth. Joss Whedon could sneeze into a napkin and I’d watch it, so I love Much Ado About Nothing directed by him and starring his friends. But if I’m being 100% honest with you, this is probably one of the best Shakespearean adaptations out there. Not just because of a focus on the text, but because it is able to transform a story that is bloody and violent into something the author wanted. Remember how I talked about digging deep, looking past what the play “is about” and figuring out what the play is about? Julie Taymor nails it. Repeatedly. With her version of Titus Andronicus. 

Tom Hiddleston: Charismatic Bad Guy

Recently, I went to go see Coriolanus at the Shakespeare Theatre, specifically in the Sydney Harman Hall, where I once made it through an entire tribute to Michael Kahn, including meeting the man, without once dropping to my knees and yelling, “KAAAAAHHHHNNNNN!!” at the top of my lungs. I’m pretty proud of myself for that. 

This particular production was part of National Theatre Live, where it broadcast a recent production of the play from the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London’s West End, and starred Tom Hiddleston, probably best known for managing to out-handsome the main character in Thor, and Mark Gatiss of Sherlock’s Brother fame. It was a pretty cool production.

For those of you who don’t know Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s later plays, and the last one set in Rome. It’s about a general named Caius Marcius, who’s this really cool general, but the common folk hate him. Which is ok, because he hates the common folk, so it’s mutual. He gets word that there’s a Volscian Army about to go fight Rome, so he goes and fights, personally taking down (but not killing) the leader of the Volscian Army. Later, he’s told by his mother (and man... does this guy have some mommy issues) that he should show off his scars, then run for what amounts to a pretty high political office. Fresh off his victory he easily wins the support of politicians who wish to glom on to a war hero (my, how times have changed) and then eventually starts to win over the people, but naturally two other politicians who hate him get in the way. Caius speaks loudly against popular rule, he’s condemned as a traitor, then he goes and finds the General of the Volscian Army that he recently defeated and joins up with them. Because he wants to fight. Rome, realizing there’s a problem with this great general joining their enemies, tries to persuade Caius to come back, eventually settling on sending his mother to go find him and tell him to come home. Eventually, Caius decides to make peace, and in true Shakespeare fashion, once he learns his lesson he’s brutally murdered by the Volscian General he spared earlier.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t one of Shakespeare’s more well-known plays. The main character Caius who later gets the nickname “Coriolanus” doesn’t spend a whole lot of time giving reasons for what he does to the audience, he spends a lot of his time “doing” which I find interesting. However, after discovering it, Coriolanus has become one of my very favorite Shakespearean plays, and it’s lead one of my very favorite characters, in probably just about anything.

I mentioned in my very brief review that doesn’t do the play any justice, that Coriolanus is a general, and has a complicated relationship with is mother. One that would probably make Norman Bates take a step back and say, “whoa. Let’s calm down a little bit...” She spends most of his life convincing him to be a great fighter, general, and overall hero, and he does it. He almost becomes a robot, unwilling or unable to think of anything else. Indeed, his tragic flaw is that he’s so focused on this one thing that once he gets it, he can’t move on. When asked to be a spokesman for the people, he can’t fathom speaking for people so below him. Rather, he wants to fight so badly he goes an joins his enemies because that’s what he’s been trained to do.

I wanted to bring up this play, other than the fact that watching it from the Donmar was an awesome experience, and I had an awesome friend to share it with (quick sidenote: get an awesome friend to share Shakespeare stuff with. Makes the experience so much better) because I can relate to the character of Coriolanus so readily.

No. Not the mother issues. She reads this blog regularly. Hi, Mom! And I don’t want anyone to mistake what I’m saying.

Coriolanus is a man who’s pushed his whole life to be one thing. He gets pushed to the point, and expectations get piled on him so high that when he’s asked to go in another direction, it’s really easy for him to be tricked into throwing it all away, and then running back to what he was good at... because he’s constantly told that’s all he was good at. I think too often we all fall into this Coriolanus trap. We all decide at one point or another that we’re “good at something” or “not good at something” and fall into familiar roles. In Coriolanus’ case, it was so extreme that he just wanted to be a general, it didn’t matter that he was now going to be a general for the army he just defeated, and he was going to go off and fight his friends. Essentially, Coriolanus was a monster, created by his situation, and then everyone was baffled when the monster turned on them. 

But for how many of us, how many times to we get stuck in positions where we are told we need to be a certain way, then do it, and are unwilling to take a risk that we just might suck at something? We’re all told: “You’d be great at this” or “you’re such a great XXXX” and then we don’t leave, because we’re being told by people that we need to stick out what’s familiar instead of trying to pull together what’s unfamiliar and uncomfortable? I know I feel like that. It’s one of the reasons I went so far into my teacher training: because I believed I wouldn’t be any good at the thing I really wanted to do. And I suffered for it. Big time. 

Coriolanus is a complex character, but one that flies under the radar. He doesn’t have the fame of Hamlet, nor the flashy race-based issues that can be applied today that Othello does. He’s not really manipulated by his wife like Macbeth, nor does he have the sheer foolishness of Lear. No, most of his story is told off the page, and we get a quick glimpse into what happens when an entire life leads up to a moment, then he’s told to change. He believes he’s superior to everyone. And that deeply affects him, because when he’s told to humble himself, he just can’t do it. Oh, there are conspirators... Rome always seems to have them. But that’s what I like about him. He’s a man who’s trapped by his own self. And I don’t think we realize just how often we all get trapped by own our selves, we get in our own way. Coriolanus wanted to be a great man, and returned from war a great man. 

It’s easy to point to a tragic flaw in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes. And we will often do that, and then it’s easy to judge. The thing about Coriolanus is that he was failed. He was failed by people around him who were supposed to help. 

What I relate to about this character is the fact that he was trapped. He was trapped by his sense of self, and who he was. He walks into the play knowing who he is. He spends half the play knowing who he is. The problem comes when he stops being who he is, and then tries to be something else for everyone else, because they all say “that’s what you should do.” I think its important that we all go back to that one idea that we are true to ourselves. 

Whew. Got a little preachy at the end. I promise they won’t all be like this!