Titus, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon - review and pictures

There is murder - 14 in all - rape, the severing of many body parts and untold other abominations, so much so that Shakespeare's authorship of the Hammer-horror style plot was for some time in doubt.

It's gory, but so very good.

This welcome retelling of the 400-year-old revenge tragedy is brought bang up to date with a 10-minute preamble which sees disaffected youths in tracksuits and hoodies, one carrying an anti-austerity placard, hurl missiles at the government building, visible only through security fencing, fight, loot and plunder. Everyone, it seems, is out for revenge.

And all the while they are taking selfies of themselves or are being filmed by television news reporters. This is 21st century anarchy recorded in a self-consciously 21st century manner. Togas are swapped for sharp suits and slinky dresses, army fatigues and Barbour jackets.

A cheerful brass band heralds the triumphant return of Roman general Titus Andronicus from 40 years at war with the Goths. He is the people's choice to take over as the new emperor but makes the fatal error of executing the eldest son of defeated Goth queen Tamora as revenge for the loss of his own sons in war and then turns down the top job, allowing the late emperor's son Saturninus and Tamora, who quickly form a marital and military alliance, to fill the vacancy.

And so the long chain of revenge, cruelty and slaughter that follows is set in motion.

Blanche McIntyre's production does not spare us the grisly detail. Titus has his hand chopped off by two nurses brandishing saws and long blades. Tamora's sons are hung upside down like pigs before their throats are slit. They are raised to the rafters still raining blood on their killers.

But there are lighter moments , including the squashing of the unfortunate fly, the arrival of a hapless messenger on a pizza delivery bike and, not least, the climactic banquet scene in which a gleeful Titus in chef's hat prances on to the stage to serve Tamora her slaughtered sons' in a pie. Did I mention the cannibalism?

Even amid savagery on this scale, Lavinia's rape, the atrocity at the heart of this play, still has the power to shock. Hannah Morrish gives a terrifically understated performance as Titus's silenced, mutilated daughter.

There are many other exceptional performances. David Troughton is towering as Titus, at his best in the grizzled old warrior's mad, euphoric phase, while Nia Gwynne as his adversary Tamora magnificently combines cruelty and sexual allure. Stefan Adegbola is deliciously malicious as her lover Aaron.

The production runs in repertoire until 2 September 2017, before a run at the Barbican Theatre in London between 7 December 2017 – 19 January 2018.