Titus+-+David+Aziz

David Aziz Farley Richmond Intro to Theatre 16 April 2017 Titus Andronicus Critique Shakespeare has concocted another wonderful play known as Titus Andronicus. This play is about a captain in the Roman army at the time that has served his city great amount of years of battle. He comes home and a new leader is announced in Rome which brings upon havoc to the city. All his sons and daughters suffer with great hardships, such as losing tongues and hands, some are even killed. He is brought to the brink of insanity by the new empress of Rome. He sets up a plan to end his daughter's misery by killing her, killing the empress, and finishing off the emperor. Shakespeare did an excellent job writing this play and I greatly appreciated all the blood and gore from this play in contrast to the very slow, more boring other plays. This one involved killing and violence, which I find much more appealing to watch in a theatre. There were many things that went very well in this play and a few things that did not go as well in my opinion. The things that will be focused on in this critique are the directing aspect, the sounds/ lighting, and finally the costumes. The entire production as a whole was extremely well coordinated and much higher production quality than the previous 3 plays that I have seen. Just upon entering the Fine Arts theatre and witnessing the stage, I realized that it was going to be a much higher quality performance. To begin with, the directing aspect of the play was very well done in general. The casting of all the characters seemed to be very effective, including the main character, Titus. Titus was by far the most conveying character in the entire play. He really stood out to me as the perfect appearance for the character of Titus Andronicus. His beard and older age played wonderfully off the age of the character. It was very clear that this casting was a perfect fit for a war captain that had seen many battles. One of the poorly picked casting members was the daughter of Titus. Compared to her lover and the rest of the cast, she was much shorter than everyone else and I found that quite distracting. When she tried to kiss her lover, he had to almost kneel down to the ground in order to kiss her. I believe her acting was wonderful and really stirred the action on stage; especially when she opened her mouth and blood came oozing out. The only thing that was negative about the casts were the differentiating heights of all the actors. The play venue was perfect and I really enjoyed how the main part of the stage was angled down. This allowed the audience to witness all the small things that were happening on the ground. It also provided an excellent platform for the killing of the two thugs while their heads hung off the stage. I am unsure if this idea came from the stage designer or the director, but it was very well done. The stage designer and the director must work together perfectly in order for such a large production to be easily watched. They coordinated everything so elegantly with one another and allowed the play to flow almost perfectly. The interpreted setting that came from the words of the actors was very convincing and did not affect the production quality at all. If the play had a higher budget, I believe they could have taken the stage design and elevated it to a much larger level by adding all these spoken elements. Instead of having plain wood as the stage design, with a larger production budget, maybe the team could have painted it and added props that added to the time period. This was one thing I found quite confusing during the play. There were no elements that depicted an early Roman city except for the fact that the actors were carrying swords. I wish that the director took more opportunities to really demonstrate the time period of this play better. Overall, the director did a magnificent job in casting, but lacked effort in conveying a more realistic setting of ancient Rome. The sound and lighting were the reasons I enjoyed this play so much. Directly from the start of the play, as I had just entered the Theatre, I looked up to see a fog machine blowing smoke in front of the lights. This allowed the audience to see the beams of light, which allowed for an awesome effect. It really allowed me to feel like I was in some spectacular place with rays of light shining from above. This was one of the major reasons I loved this play so much. The subtlety of the changing in lights was almost natural, and it flowed so well scene by scene. I really commend the light crew, they did a magnificent job setting up these lights for this play! Along with the light crew, the sound crew also did a great job with the sound effects of the play. The moment that stuck out to me the most was the chopping off of Titus’ hand. There was no actual chopping off that we could see, except for the spot lights and a eery sound effect as his blade came down. This moment sent chills down my spine and I cannot get it out my head. The eeriness that came from this scene really set the mood and drive for the rest of the play, and I cannot think of another better way they could have done this scene. The sound and lighting crew’s really blew me away during the play and are the key to this production. Anyone can attempt to do a similar shakespearean production, but this was the creative element that really separates this specific production from any other performed. The other scene that really stuck out to me, was a similar type of scene, where all the actors were stabbing with their swords on the front of the stage. The same type of lighting and sounds were used there and it really amazed me. The director worked very well with the sound and lighting crews to develop a great production for the show especially since it was in such a large theatre. The only issues I had with the sound, were the microphones. The microphones moments during the play were muffled and did not sound like the rest of the play at all, which was disappointing. They should have just removed the microphones and allowed all the actors to speak up louder to avoid this discrepancy. The final element I found actually quite disappointing was the costume design. The costumes for the characters did not seem to bring any sort of ancient roman type style. The emperor’s outfit and Titus’ outfit were both extremely modern clothes which was quite confusing to me. Titus was wearing a white buttoned down shirt, which is not at all the type of dress a typical male captain from Rome would wear. The emperor also was wearing a suit jacket with a red buttoned down shirt, which was also very confusing to me. I wish the emperor would have worn something more traditional, such as a white robe of an emperor during this time period. Since they were using shakespearean language, I expected the play to also be dressed and staged in a shakespearean style. In the original production, the dressings would have been much more time period based to help the groundlings understand what was going on. This was a major disconnecting point for me and the production; the fact that the style they were using to perform did not fit the style of stage nor did it fit the style of costumes. The only good costumes that were on stage were the criminals. Their costumes fit the style of a prisoner during this time period. Their costumes were ragged and destroyed which complemented their savage nature. The prisoners acted without any manners and their costumes portrayed that well, since they were not taken care of. When the criminals became the soldiers of the new emperor, I wish they had changed their costumes to something more soldier-like, to help explain that they gained a new rank. It was hard to pick up on the fact that they had become the new soldiers for the emperor until much later into the play. This has been my all time favorite play out of the 4 productions that I have seen during this semester. The higher level budget and venue really increased the effect of the director and play. The casting of the play was well done in terms of acting capability, but lacked in uniformity. Many of the actors were much larger and taller than the shorter actors which became distracting at points. The director and scene designer worked excellently together to create a more abstract slanted stage. The slanted stage and hole in the ground were extremely useful for blocking of characters and showing the audience the action that was happening on the ground. Without the stage being slanted, the audience may have had a hard time seeing what was going on, on the stage. The lights and sounds up the play were the icing on the cake for me. The lights and smoke gave a heavenly sense to the light coming from the ceiling. The coordination between lights and sound crew worked wonderfully off each other to demonstrate the killing scenes. The sound gave an eeriness to the play while the chopping off of Titus’ hand took place.This element of the production was the major reason it did so well in my point of view. Finally the costumes did not convey the correct time period of ancient Rome and did not do a great job. Perhaps with more attention taken to combine the costumes, stage, and setting, the production crew could have elevated this play to a whole other level. Above all, the final production that was performed in front of me was wonderful and kept me hooked until the last breathes of the play. The final scene was wonderfully executed and I loved every bit of this play. I will definetly will be coming back to the next seasons plays to see what wonderful productions are coming next!