SOURCE: Berlin, Normand. Review of Titus Andronicus. Massachusetts Review 44, no. 3 (fall 2003): 531.

In the following excepted review of James Edmondson's 2002 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Titus Andronicus, Berlin notes that Edmondson severely blunted the comic potentially of the drama in favor of monstrous horror and brutal retribution.

Titus Andronicus was performed on the outdoor Elizabethan Stage, so called because the dimensions are similar to those of the Fortune Theatre, but it is not an authentic Elizabethan theater for a number of reasons. It has side exits, large doors in the center of the stage, and various staging platforms. The audience is seated and spread out (no groundlings here!), and the performances are open to an evening sky, not the afternoon sky of the Elizabethans. Not as compact as the Globe, which was able to accommodate two or three thousand with good sight lines and supposedly fine acoustics, Ashland's outdoor...