Buntport Theater

Five people are draped on and around a painted van. They all wear makeshift Shakespearean clothing. In front is a smiling man with his hands out. The hood of the van has a large smiling portrait of him. One smiling man is draped across the hood. Sitting on top of the van are three more people holding a banner that says “van-o-players”.

Denver Post- A bloody tragedy turns into a hoot: Buntport’s ‘Titus’ a biting parody

(*Revised from published version with permission*)

“Titus Andronicus” has long been regarded as Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy. Who knew it could also be his funniest comedy?

Buntport Theatre spoofs the Bard with the intelligent and endlessly inventive send-up “Titus Andronicus! The Musical.” The body count (kept on a chalkboard scorecard) tops out at 35 (seven times the number of people in the cast), but the only tragedy here is that the smartypants at the Buntport were forced to shorten their run to just two weekends. Brian Colonna, who plays Titus, underwent an emergency appendectomy just before the April 25 opening, delaying things by two weeks. But he’s back in full flourish, and he’s got scads of killings to make up for in a very short period of time.

The revenge tragedy “Titus” is Shakespeare’s most lampoonable work, but the key to spoofing it successfully is to stay firmly rooted in the text. Several other companies around town are currently taking liberties with Shakespearean models, but none comes close to the level of smart humor and biting parody that Buntport achieves. The Bug, for example, is presenting “Comedy of Errors,” but in acknowledgement of its difficult material, it ill-advisedly goes for broad, desperate stabs at humor that are accomplished only when its actors leap desperately out of character, or bulldoze the fourth wall. It comes across like children’s theater.

The mad geniuses at the Buntport, who adapted and directed the material as a collective, take a more sophisticated yet still-bawdy approach to “Titus,” with brilliant sight gags, silly songs and masterful prop work that has fun with the material while staying true to its lusty spirit. While the Bug’s cast doesn’t even seem to much like the material it is working with, the young Buntport players love theirs so fully they could eat it for lunch like a Chiron pie.

After I saw Buntport’s romp and stomp, I checked out Julie Taymor’s beautifully violent film starring Anthony Hopkins. The approaches could not be more different, but they have two things in common: They are both at times side-splittingly funny, and they both illuminate the text for the audience, the benchmark against which any Shakespearean production is judged.

Titus is a Roman general who has lost 22 sons in battle and upon his return offers the son of the imprisoned Goth queen Tamora as a ritual sacrifice. Titus defers the throne to Saturninus, who promptly weds the revenge-minded Tamora. Her sons rape Titus’ daughter Lavinia, and chop off her hands and tongue. They also murder Saturninus’ brother and frame two of Titus’ surviving sons. When offered his sons’ lives in exchange for a hand, Titus gladly lops his off, but in return is delivered only his sons’ heads. Thought delirious with madness, Titus fashions a tasty revenge: He kills Tamora’s sons Chiron and Demetrius and bakes them into meat pies that Tamora unknowingly eats with ketchup and mustard before meeting her own doom.

The collective has proudly chopped about 50 percent of the text, but still, how to keep the epic straight with a cast of five? The cast has fashioned an inspired cheat sheet. A large board shows the painted faces of all five actors in a row. Below each face are the names of the characters that actor portrays. Each name is accompanied by a pull-string lightbulb that Muni Kulasinghe flicks on and off at breakneck speed. So if you ever get confused, you can instantly see which character each actor is portraying. It’s a hoot to watch.

Buntport presents “Titus” in its otherwise empty warehouse space with only a Club Wagon van for a set. And when that van is a rockin’, someone comes a choppin’.

Colonna is P.S. McGoldstien, leader of the denim-based Van O’ Players minstrels. The van is painted on three sides to represent different settings, and the hole in the roof serves nicely as the pit where Lavinia’s lover meets his doom, complete with blood-smeared windows.

Another hollowed window serves as the opening for some puppet theater scenes that Taymor would love. Erik Edborg is a great puppeteer who plays the brothers Chiron and Demetrius as a ripped-out car radio and a gas can. When they get baked into singing meat pies, the gas spout (snout?) sticks out of the crust. Trust me: It’s funnier than it may sound.

The sight gags are nonstop: In the original, Tamora’s infidelity with Aaron is revealed when she delivers a black baby. Here her baby sports a tiny Chef Boy-ar-dee mustache that matches Aaron’s (Hannah Duggan). When Titus sacrifices his hand, it is smashed off in the van door. When a sword is drawn, it’s an oil dipstick.

And about that music. It’s ridiculous and bossa-nova saucy, like the play itself. It parodies the Carpenters (“Close to You”), the jazz standard “Beyond the Sea,” even Bon Jovi’s awful “Living on a Prayer.”

Just go see it. But if you don’t like it, and your heart grows full with the thirst for revenge, please forget that you heard about it from me.

-John Moore, May 15, 2002, Denver Post