I’ve long been a fan of revenge tragedy, that genre where gobbets of the grimmest humour float in buckets of gore. Albeit that this is an early Shakespeare play, he could clearly turn an efficient hand to the blood’n’guts. Put it this way: Titus cuts off his hand in a vain attempt to save the lives of two of his sons, after his daughter Lavinia has had both hands and her tongue removed following her rape upon the corpse of her husband by two princes of the Goths. Titus’ subsequent revenge takes the form of serving the Queen of the Goths a nice prince pie. This is not an earnest political drama of late-imperial Rome.

I don’t think the title role could currently be better cast. David Troughton is a fine deadpan comic yet one who always ensures there’s a shadow lowering across the joke, and is also first-rate at the serious, even sombre material. For some of the early acts are hard going: the crimson tap hasn‘t yet been properly turned on and what we’re seeing is not wicked deeds but simple wickedness. Lavinia is an unforgiving role throughout; Hannah Morrish does not go for the popular traumatised, thousand-yard-staring option, but remains largely still, as if trying not to be present, and seemingly phobic about being touched.

Blanche McIntyre’s production seems at first to be simply modish in setting the play amid contemporary-flavoured upheavals, but this pays off increasingly as she gets both humorous and serious mileage out of the conventions and nuances of public political rhetoric, with figures behind a great-sealed lectern delivering pieces to camera. What McIntyre cannot manage is to overcome the problems of colour-blind casting in an instance like this where the world of the play is plainly racist. The worst villain of the lot, Aaron the Moor (an assured Stefan Adegbola), is not a bad guy who simply happens to be black; rather, ethnicity and morality are linked inextricably, which makes it awkward when, say, one of Titus’ sons is played by an Afro-British actor, and his son-in-law by someone of south Asian heritage. Ultimately, though, it’s a matter of personal taste for bad taste. I’m in favour; your mileage may vary.

Written for the Financial Times.