Joel MacCormack (Lucius), John Hodgkinson (Titus Andronicus) & Emma Fielding (Marcia Andronicus)
Hampstead Theatre, London, September 2025
Photo by Genevieve Girling
103 – Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | TuneIn | RSS | More
Titus Andronicus is Shakepeare’s first tragedy, although in fact, scholars believe that Shakespeare did not write the whole play himself. An older playwirght named George Peele may have authored part or all of the first act, and possibly more in the last act. Whatever its origins, the play is notorious for its graphic horror, which includes multiple killings, amputations, decapitations, rape and cannibalism. Horrors that have overwhelmed audiences and alienated critics for centuries. When the play was performed at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London in 2006 the theatre reported that at every performance several people fainted at the gruesome representations on stage.
Although the play was hugely popular in Shakespeare’s time, later critics such as Samuel Johnson dismissed “the barbarity of the spectacles”, the Victorians naturally disapproved of it, and even in the 20th century, T.S. Eliot wrote that Titus Andronicus was “one of the stupidest and one of the most uninspired plays ever written.”
However, the play’s bleak portrait of amoral leadership, sexual violence, racial conflict, and personal and political despair has struck a chord in more recent times, with several prominent revivals and restored critical opinion. As we record this episode an exciting new production of the play is on stage at the Hampstead theatre in London, having transferred following its acclaimed run at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. The production is directed by Max Webster, who I am delighted to say joins me in this episoce to explore Shakespeare’s full-blooded tragedy.
Max was a previous guest of the podcast when he joined me to talk about Oscar Wilde’s camp classic The Importance of Being Earnest:
090 The Importance of Being Earnest
Max Webster
Max Webster’s directing credits include The Importance of Being Earnest (National Theatre/West End); Macbeth with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo (Donmar Warehouse/West End), The Real Thing, Fanny and Alexander and Cover My Tracks (Old Vic); Henry V (Donmar Warehouse); Life of Pi (West End, Boston, Broadway and UK and US tour); Antigone, As You Like It and Twelfth Night (Regent’s Park); and Dr Seuss’ The Lorax (Old Vic, San Diego, Minneapolis), among many more.
Recommended Play
Max recommended Blasted by Sarah Kane.
The Footnotes that accompany our episode on William Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy, Titus Andronicus, include notes on the original published texts of the play; the “wilderness of tigers” that is Rome; racism in the character of Aaron and his relationship with Tamora; and Lavinia’s awful fate.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
0 Comments