The Globe’s performance of Titus Andronicus certainly opens up a lot of questions about society, especially war and violence. However, it also emphasized violence against and their reactions to this violence, which brought out important aspects of the role of women in Titus Andronicus. I found the role of women particularly important and extremely shocking in this production. Women in this production are almost always victims of violence, sometimes participate in violence, and are almost always sexualized in Titus Andronicus. Although several women are tortured violently and cruelly sexually assaulted, the actors playing these women do not play them as hopeless victims. Indira Varma, who played Tamora, developed the complexities of her character’s emotions and actions in her reaction to the violence incurred against her son. Although she is certainly exploited as a mother, she does not become a victim. She channels her victimization into action, becoming an assaulter and a violent character herself. Indira’s performance did not do this in a way that abandoned Tamora’s womanhood, however, a dichotomy difficult to achieve when portraying a villainous woman. In contrast to this portrayal of women, Flora Spencer-Longhurst’s impactful performance as Lavinia successfully reveals the emotional and physical destruction that results from the gruesome violence against women in Titus Andronicus without uttering a word.
In Act I Scene I of Titus Andronicus, the Romans sacrifice Tamora’s son’s life. Tamora, Queen of the Goths, begs Titus for mercy and pleads with him to spare her son’s life. Indira Varma’s performance in this role highlights the immense pain that haunts a mother after her son’s slaughter. In the Q&A session with Indira Varma after the performance, she explained that she hates when actors cry on stage. Indira argues that a successful performance should portray the emotions through the words themselves and the physical manifestations of those words, without the inclusion of fake crying. According to Indira, if you’re a good enough actor you do not need to resort to crying as a technique. This comment from Indira sums up her performance as Tamora very well. When the Romans are threatening her son’s life, she does not go into hysteria but the audience immediately understands the immediacy of her pain and sorrow. Tamora mourns her son’s death briefly, but instead of acting victimized she launches into a campaign for revenge against the Romans. Indira’s performance of Tamora highlights how the sacrifice of her son’s life fuels her revenge, but Indira does not play a sorrowful or weak woman. In this revival performance of Titus Andronicus, Tamora seems strong and powerful, a woman with a goal to achieve and a means to achieve it.
Lavinia represents a very different type of woman, Roman rather than a Gothic, and reveals an alternative reaction to the violence incurred against her in The Globe’s Titus Andronicus. At the start of the play, Lavinia’s life is essentially the antithesis of Tamora’s. Lavinia, the daughter of Titus Andronicus, initially requested to be the empress but saved, dwells in innocence. Instead, Tamora becomes empress in Lavinia’s place. Later in the play, however, Lavinia also becomes a victim of violence. Tamora’s sons, Demetrius and Chiron, attack and rape Lavinia. Following this act, the brothers cut off Lavinia’s hands and cut out her tongue so that she could not speak of her attackers. Flora Spencer-Longhurst’s performance as Lavinia was extremely traumatizing, but also moving. It was incredible how shattered Lavinia’s character seemed when she came out onto the stage, mutilated, unable to move, unable to speak. It was not even the blood coming from her body that disturbed me, but the pure emotional trauma that Lavinia endured. Her innocence destroyed, her body ravished. The physical manifestation of this pain was apparent, despite Lavinia’s inability to vocalize the brutality of it the way that Tamora does in the first scene. Flora embodied this representation of Lavinia extremely well, adding to the theme of violence against women that Tamora also endures. Although Tamora and Lavinia’s violent experiences are different, they both endure violent actions that stand out in the production. Many men are brutally murdered in Titus Andronicus, but the violence against these two women stands out in this production because of the exceptional performance of these two actors and the extreme brutality and cruelness of the violence they endure. Although they experience different types of violence and react alternatively, they are connected to each other because of the brutality they have experienced as women.
In the beginning of Titus Andronicus, Lavinia seems to be the complete antithesis of Tamora. These characters are really the only important female characters in the play. They live among men and they live among violence and murder, but they endure greater violence and brutality than any of the other characters. The violence against the women is more traumatic than the murdering of the men because it comes with disturbance and cruelty. Indira Varma and Flora Spencer-Longhurst display the reactions to this violence in their characters uniquely, but they remain connected to each other because of their endurance. In the Q&A session, I asked Indira Varma if she felt like her character, Tamora, had any remorse for the rape of Lavinia. Initially, it enraged me that a woman (even with a motive) could ever witness the gruesome rape and destruction of another woman. Indira’s answer shed immense light on the situation as she explained that after Tamora’s son is killed, she has only one goal in mind. She must avenge his death. She must destroy Titus and the Romans. In order to do this successfully, Tamora had to sacrifice Lavinia. This still does not seem morally acceptable, but Indira also revealed that during rehearsal she realized that Tamora repeats over and over “away with her” to her sons before they attack Lavinia. Indira felt that this was Tamora’s desperate attempt to just get her away and get it over with, because although she saw the grossness of the act her sons were about to perform she did not see another way to avenge her son’s death. Despite the many differences that Tamora and Lavinia’s characters grapple with, both women endure significant emotional trauma. They are both women who are targeted by society because of their position as women. They are sexualized (Lavinia by Tamora’s sons and Tamora by her relationship with Aaron) and they recognize each other’s pain in secret.
