It was a very popular play in Shakespeare's time, but has been critically reappraised only in the second half of the twentieth century and even now some regard it as ridiculous and unperformable.

Peter Brook's1955 (photo 4) interpretation was a landmark for the play, the RSC and Lawrence Olivier. That production of Titus Andronicus completed the canon of all recognised Shakespearean plays being performed on the stage of Stratford's Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (SMT) and Olivier's Titus gave the character a new status as a great tragic role.

The two of the greatest dangers of staging Titus Andronicus are either that your audience finds the violence too much, feel sick and rush to the cloakroom (which has certainly happened on some occasions at RSC productions) or they react by laughing. Professor Stanley Wells observed that inappropriate laughter was avoided in Warner's production 'by the exploitation of all genuine comedy; latent in the text' such as 'the squabble between Titus, Lucius and Marcus over who shall have the honour of losing a hand in the hope of saving Titus's sons' (Stanley Wells, Shakespeare, A Dramatic Life, p. 76, 1994).

Recent RSC productions of Titus Andronicus have included Bill Alexander’s production in 2003 (photo 3) and in Yukio Ninagawa’s 2006 production (photos 1 and 2).