A Shakespearean Finale
Thursday, July 17th by scott malia
Titus Andronicus is rearing its bloody head again, this time in a production in Illinois. A recent write-up on the show mentioned that the production will (natch) lean heavily on the grisly, gory elements of the story. It is unsurprising, as the play tends to yield interpretations in the Hostel vein. What was also interesting about the article was its mentioning of a film called Theatre of Blood, a horror film from 1973 starring Vincent Price.
The connection? The film features a mad, bad actor who dispatches critics one by one to get his revenge. What makes the murders novel is that each is based on a scene from Shakespeare, including one from Titus Andronicus (I’ll spare you the gross details. Let’s just say, be careful what you eat). In addition to recreating the stage scenes in order to kill his victims, Price also gets to recite some of the great soliloquies from the plays.
Aside from the obvious jabs at critics, Theatre of Blood is also oddly Shakespearean in its own right. In particular, it parallels the often operatic level of excess employed in performing Titus Andronicus. In the play and in the film, people don’t just die, they are devoured (literally, in some cases). Yet amidst all of the beheadings and disemboweling, there is poetry. It is what Shakespeare does best: mixing together high art and low art so seamlessly that you cannot tell the difference between the two.
