BLOOMINGTON - Dinner's about to be served at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, with only one choice of entrée. Be advised, though: It's neither fish nor fowl. And definitely not vegan-friendly.

Even so, with the Bard dishing it up, it's a safe bet most palates will be sated - especially since that tasty main course is being prepared for the first time in the festival's 31-year history.

The occasion: the long-awaited debut of one of Will's thornier plays, "Titus Andronicus," a thundering family melodrama of revenge and madness.

Indeed, some of us may have first encountered this rarely staged play through the back door - via the 1973 cult cinema morsel, "Theater of Blood," with Vincent Price as a ham Shakespearean actor driven mad by a circle of unforgiving London critics.

He avenges himself by slaying each of the uppity scribes in an array of grisly demises taken straight from the Bard's canon, ranging from "The Merchant of Venice's" "pound of flesh" to "Richard III's" drowning in a keg of malmsey.

But it was the death scene extracted from "Titus" that was the most unforgettable: the baking of a queen's two sons in a meat pie, which is then served to the unsuspecting royalty for dinner.

In the movie, a flamboyantly gay (thus, "queenly") critic, played by the great Robert Morley, is the unlucky gourmand served his two well-done sons for dinner: a pair of beloved pet poodles baked in the ultimate shepherd's pie.

In addition to a queen supping on her sons, "Titus Andronicus" is chockablock with a litany of horror movie outrages, from throat slashing, to rape, to decapitation, to tongue removal, to dismemberment, to countless subterfuges and murders.

Why, then, hasn't the play been more popular over the centuries, what with all that grue and mayhem to lure the masses in?

And why has it taken the Illinois Shakespeare Festival 31 seasons to embrace it? (The play previews at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, then opens its regular run at 8 p.m. Friday.)

Interestingly, "Titus" was, in fact, one of the Bard's two or three most popular plays during his lifetime.

That's when the Elizabethan upper classes and the groundlings flocked to The Globe to wallow in the lush revenge of the Goth Queen Tamora and the encroaching madness of her captor Titus Andronicus (see accompanying synopsis for the particulars of that relationship).

But the play's strong doses of violence and outrage lost favor during the buttoned-down Victorian area, notes festival manager John Poole. As a result, it suffered the decades-long stigma of being one of Shakespeare's "problem plays."

"I think Shakespeare's plays come and go with the times," says Poole. "Some are more aptly suited to the world we live in, and 'Titus' is now considered one of his finer plays."

According to Poole, the "Titus" tide began to turn in the 1950s, when British theater legend Peter Brook revived it to great acclaim.

But beyond that juicy reference scene in "Theater of Blood," "Titus Andronicus" remained out of easy reach of the general public until 10 years ago, when Broadway director Julie ("The Lion King") Taymor made her film debut directing a lavish, postmodern rendition with Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Jessica Lange as Goth nemesis, Queen Tamora.

Since that big coming-out party, the play has found further renewed favor among theater companies around the world.

More importantly, its time truly seems to have come again courtesy its disturbingly relevant themes of duty beyond reason, betrayal by one's own government and the horrific personal price to be paid for a lifetime of war.

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival isn't mincing words in its advertising, ballyhooing "Titus" as "a play with: 14 killings, 9 of them on stage; 6 severed members; 1 assault (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count); 1 live burial; 1 case of insanity; and 1 of cannibalism - an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines. YOU THOUGHT TODAY'S POLITICS WERE BRUTAL?"

Choreographing this calamity is Chicago-based director Catherine Weidner, who prefers to downplay the lurid details in favor of what she calls its powerhouse "exploration of the idea of duty, loyalty and family."

Though not denying the violence (let's just say that highly detailed props of decapitated heads and dismembered hands, buckets of stage blood and two freshly baked 'meat' pies are part of the nightly requirements), Weidner maintains her goal is not to stage a horror show for the "Saw" generation.

"We're focusing on the family story and its betrayals," she said, "so that the play is driven by the behavior, not the violence."

And, along the way, any parallels to current events in the world today that audiences may discern are entirely intentional.

"This is play that asks 'what do you do when you've been duped and led along by your government to believe in something, then come back from the war and say, "this isn't right"?' How do you reconcile that? If that's something that isn't in the headlines today, I don't know what is."

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The plot thickens …

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

Following is a "Titus Andronicus" plot primer, with most of the key plot points, including several spoilers, so proceed with that in mind (names of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival actors are given in parentheses after each character's name):

Roman general Titus Andronicus (longtime festival veteran David Kortemeier) returns from a 10-year campaign against Rome's foes, the Goths.

His prisoners are Goth queen Tamora (Corrie Eddleman), her sons Chiron (Theo Black) and Demetrius (Cody Proctor), and her lover Aaron the Moor (Robert Ramirez).

To avenge the deaths of 21 of his own sons during the campaign, Titus orders another of Tamora's captured sons, her eldest, Alarbus (Mark Hines), executed. Despite her desperate pleas that he be spared, Alarbus dies before her eyes.

While he was away, the emperor of Rome died, leaving the position open. Titus is nominated for the throne by his influential brother Marcus (Robert Anderson), but he turns it down in deference to the late emperor's son, Saturninus (Chris Marino).

Titus also agrees that Saturninus should take Titus' daughter Lavinia (Magdalyn Donnelly) as queen - never mind that she's already been betrothed to Saturninus' brother, Bassianus (Daniel Harray).

Two of Titus' surviving sons, Martius (Michael Cotey) and Quintus (Chris Amos), assist Lavinia and Bassianus in escaping the marriage. With Lavinia gone, the power-craving Saturninus decides to takes Tamora as his bride.

Meanwhile, Tamora's lover, Aaron the Moor, begins wielding an influence over her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, urging them to assassinate Bassianus, which they do in Lavinia's presence.

Lavinia is then raped by the sons over Bassianus' corpse. The horrific act is then followed by the removal of her tongue and hands, all the better to keep her from revealing what has happened.

Aaron tries to implicate Titus' sons in Bassianus' death. He succeeds.

As they are being led to execution, Aaron tells Titus he can save his sons' lives by sacrificing one of his hands on a chopping block. He does, only to be greeted by the spectacle of his sons' decapitated heads returned in exchange for the hand.

Titus swears vengeance, and begins to lose his grip on reality as his sole remaining son, Lucius (William LeDent), leaves Rome to raise an army, all the better to dethrone Tamora and Saturninus.

Tamora tells Saturninus that she will use the seemingly insane Titus to lure Lucius to a parley, at which point all of the surviving Andronicus family members will be ambushed.

But Titus turns the tables, using his alleged madness to outwit Tamora.

The scheme involves a lavish dinner, a guest appearance by Lavinia and some tasty meat pies with some very special ingredients.

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And then there were these

With the production this season of "Titus Andronicus," the list of Shakespeare plays never staged at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival has just gotten shorter. These are the untouched titles:

Timon of Athens

Possible reason: "A poor relation of the major tragedies," says Shakespeare scholar-critic Sir Frank Kermode.

Troilus and Cressida

Possible reason: The play wasn't even popular or well-liked in Shakespeare's lifetime, though it has come to be guardedly embraced from the 20th century onward.

Henry VI, Parts I, II and III

Possible reason: The epic tri-part structure makes it a formidable undertaking at best (it should be noted that the entire cycle was boiled down into a single entity - an original work by Chicago playwright Jeffrey Sweet, "The Falcon's Pitch" - and world-premiered at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in 1998).

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GO!

What: "Titus Andronicus," directed by Catherine Weidner

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday (preview), July 24, 27 and 29, and Aug. 6; 8 p.m. Friday, and Aug. 2 and 8

Where: Illinois Shakespeare Festival at Ewing Manor, Bloomington

Tickets: Preview, $14 to $30; regular, $20-$40

Box office number: (309) 438-2535