A little-known Shakespeare masterpiece presented with true Elizabethan panache.

There is no little debate about what "Titus [Andronicus]" actually is. When Shakespeare entered the playwriting business, the playgoing public was very much into what we would now call Gothic horror. This is the era of "The Duchess of Malfi" and other delights of the macabre. So what was Will up to: cashing in on a current fad or spoofing the entire genre? Whichever it was, he wrote the granddaddy of all gruesome potboilers. Modern Hollywood may come up with more gore, but generally in connection with things that aren't the least believable.

The opening scene sets the tone for the whole. This set is a stylized Forum, and all the sets manage to suggest the ancient and the modern at the same time. Roman soldiers enter, with swords and motorcycles, wearing costumes that are Romanesque but not in any way truly Roman. Other characters appear in clothes more nearly modern. Somehow the sets, props, and costumes seem to suggest not the past or present, but a sort of retro future. This puts the play in a timeless setting that heightens the tragedy by taking it out of remote antiquity and replacing it into a sort of Everytime. This matches Titus, the good honest soldier who, as such, is Everyman. Anthony Hopkins matches this with a measured, matchless performance full of flawed nobility and bottomless tragedy. (Painting his face blue, like a Pict in the wrong space and time, is an interesting if puzzling touch.)

Surrounding Hopkins is a fine cast, one that shares his talent for making Shakespeare's iambic sound modern and yet from a height, as if uttered by lives larger (for good or ill) than our own -- giving a wonderful Wagnerian quality to Shakespeare's little-known Roman play. They present a convincing argument that the play could be one of Shakespeare's best, a tragedy in the Greek style, a cup overflowing with hubris.

Going toe-to-toe in hatred with Titus is Jessica Lange's finely-honed Tamora. Defeated in war, she must endure Titus' execution of one of her 3 sons by disembowelment. Elizabethan playgoers of course had plenty of opportunity to see that sort of thing in the flesh -- it was part of drawing and quartering, a punishment for traitors, of which all the Tudors were able to find plenty. Titus will later play Hannibal Lector to the other sons. Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers do very well as the sons -- but they are far outshone by Harry Lennix as Aaron, Tamora's "Moorish" lover and her family's evil genius. ("Moor" isn't quite the anachronism it might seem, since Aaron was probably Mauritanian, a related Roman ethnic designation. Even Aaron's name is believable, since the Mauritanian ruling family had connections with the awful Herodian dynasty of Judaea.)

Good performances are to be had also from Colm Feore and Laura Fraser as Titus' brother and daughter -- the latter a sweet young thing who is sacrificed to the god of tragedy in grand gruesome style.

Titus' troubles are compounded by troubles in the Imperial family. The Emperor is dead and his sons Bassianus and Saturninus (James Frain, Alan Cumming)are competing to succeed him. Here Shakespeare has strained (as is his wont) but no broken Roman history. Bassianus was the son of Sepitmus Severus, and is better known as Caracalla. He had a brother (whom he disposed of), Geta. Saturninus is a name that pops up for a couple of unsuccessful imperial candidates somewhat later, after the reign of Claudius II. Bassianus is the good guy and Saturninus is the BAD guy. Boy, is he bad -- so bad he's terrific. In Shakespeare's time he would have been playing to the pit and they would have loved it. For villany, nothing succeeds like excess, and Cumming rises (if that is the term) to the occasion with the most manic performance since that wonderful Sheriff in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Altogether, this is a terrific performance of Shakespeare's defining contribution to grand guignol. What a hoot!! Let's all pray the same producer and director may someday give us a "Duchess of Malfi".