The Traverse had a very good play on last week. By a Quebecois writer Right Now is the story of a young couple who appear to have lost a child and whose lives are taken over by a rather odd family living next door. Despite dealing with loss it was very amusing, terribly well performed and at the end left us wondering what was real and what was imaginary.

Two extremely bloodthirsty families are at odds in Titus Andronicus which the Grads have just presented.  I suppose the play could be considered as a 16th century precursor of Hammer horror movies and treated on that level it's quite fun but I think Shakespeare was wise to abandon the genre and move on to much more interesting stuff.

It was done in the round in what's a new venue for us, Assembly Roxy.  It's a great space and the staging in the desert was excellent. ( It took two hours for a substantial team of which I was a puny member to move that sand out on Saturday night.)  In general I enjoyed the show, all the cast were convincing and some performances such as SJ's Lavinia who is beaten, raped, has her hands cut off and her tongue torn out were truly excellent.  But what a lot of tosh.  

The Roxy set up for Titus (photo by Gordon Hughes) and how it looked less than 24 hours afterwards during a recital by Sue Mckenzie and Ingrid Sawers. Saxophone and piano make a great combination.