If you are going to tell Shakespeare’s tale of tongue slashing and hand chopping, there is no point being mealy mouthed about it. Wrocław’s Song of the Goat company does not disoblige with their version of Titus Andronicus. Andronicus Synecdoche gives a gruesome story the full gothic opera treatment, all monochrome intensity, relentless rhythms and austere, militaristic choreography. Even at the curtain call, the large Polish company finds it hard to smile.
This is the company, set up by Anna Zubrzycki and Grzegorz Bral, that made its name on the Edinburgh fringe nearly 20 years ago with polyphonic pieces sung in an invented ur-language that was as haunting as it was fanciful. Shows such as Chronicles: A Lamentation had a mesmerising, religious intensity, the more so because of the physical commitment of the large ensemble.
