One of Shake­speare’s blood­i­est plays pre­sent­ed in a hair salon around Hal­loween? Excel­lent idea.

Fresh Dada pre­sent­ed their take on Titus Andron­i­cus last week. . Titus (Julia Har­ris in the tra­di­tion­al­ly male lead role) has returned tri­umphant­ly from the war with pris­on­ers. One of them, Tamo­ra, Queen of the Goths, (Karen Anslow) pleads for the life of her daugh­ter (tra­di­tion­al­ly a son) but is ignored and her daugh­ter is slain. Hop­ing-to-be-Emper­or, Sat­urn­i­nus (Neal Bar­ber), orig­i­nal­ly want­i­ng to mar­ry Titus’ only daugh­ter Lavinia (Catri­ona Tipene) but reject­ed by her, takes Tamo­ra as his wife instead. Grief strick­en, Tamo­ra promis­es to avenge the slight against her new hus­band and at the same time revenge the death of her daugh­ter. Vicious plot­ting and vio­lence ensue. This whole play is a con­tent warn­ing. Spoil­er: it doesn’t end well for any­one.

Anchored by strong per­for­mances from Julia Har­ris (Titus Andron­i­cus), Alan Carabott (Mar­cus Andron­i­cus), and Karen Anslow (Tamo­ra) the sto­ry zips along at a good pace. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of beau­ti­ful chan­de­liers and the bloody sto­ry was strik­ing. A min­i­mal­ist set is com­ple­ment­ed by ele­gant cos­tum­ing (design­er Sylvia Gilbert-Potts) – suits for the men, pen­cil skirts for (some of) the women. Direc­tor Joshua Hop­ton-Stew­art obvi­ous­ly has clear ideas about each of the fac­tions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong with Tamora’s two sons (James Costel­lo Ladanyi and Josh McDon­ald) in the creepy scene before they rape and dis­fig­ure Lavinia (Catri­ona Tipene). It didn’t feel quite as coher­ent in his vision for the Goth army who were now fol­low­ing Titus’ son Lucius (Gary Miller). Com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry? Very much so, but eas­i­ly under­stood thanks to the cos­tum­ing and afore­men­tioned direc­to­r­i­al vision.

Look­ing for­ward to what Fresh Dada presents next.