We’re seated along the vast bleached-wood tables of a warehouse-style restaurant. There are strip lights overhead, sous-chefs busying themselves on the aluminium tops of an open kitchen and an enormous neon sign reminding us we’re dining in a joint called Rome. The crisp club beats of JD Twitch add to the atmosphere of minimalist cool, even though the wall lined with military portraits suggests a more sinister discipline at play.
By the end of Shakespeare’s gore-fest, several more faces will be added to the gallery of dead generals. Likewise, the knives being used to chop onions will have sliced into human flesh and the kitchen staff’s mobiles will have relayed Isis-style footage of executions. We watch like expectant diners, plates and menus in front of us, realising that the clean surfaces and slick table service mask a violence that is clinical, amoral and brutal.
Director Stewart Laing’s approach has its drawbacks. Some shaky verse-speaking is made even less comprehensible by the acoustics of the Bonar Hall, where this restaurant is reimagined. And in a play not known for its psychological consistency, it’s an effort to keep up with who is raping, mutilating and murdering whom, still less why.
But set against this is the thrill of a play so dynamically realised. As George Anton’s bewildered Titus goes from a quick-tempered veteran in army fatigues to a chef feigning madness by covering his head in flour, Laing makes use of every table top and gangway to enact this tale of senseless cruelty.
In Philip Howard’s low-fat adaptation, brother Marcus becomes sister Marcia, played by Alison Peebles with the controlling hand of a head waiter and there’s a strong-willed, dignified performance by Chloe-Ann Taylor as the much-abused Lavinia. Sharp to the taste and tough to digest.
• Until 24 April. Box office: 01382 227 684. Venue: Dundee Rep
