Human indignity reigns in a reeling but commanding carousel of William Shakespeare’s ten or so tragedies boiled down to their most repellent qualities. 

In Billy’s Violence, each self-contained chapter is given, perhaps superfluously, the name of the female protagonist in the play. What begins with a worrying fit of coughing in The Merchant of (or, Death in…?) Venice, passes through the domestic strangling of Desdemona by Othello, dances around the dangerous love games of Cleopatra and the lesser-doted Anthony, gets to grips with the disentitled dad-despair of King Lear, to wind up in the literal bloodbath of (Lady) Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus – the most debased of Shakespeare’s nastier plays.

The origins of Billy’s Violence are in Needcompany founder Jan Lauwers’ “total failure” to write all the Bard’s tragedies into one evening of theatre. It proved such an awful experience during the pandemic, says Lauwers that he guiltily took up the offer by his son Victor Afung Lauwers to do it instead. As the younger explains, it was the violence of intimacy, “the rotten core of love” rather than the “distractive violence” of war that tormented him during dark lockdown readings. Sound landscapes, written by long-time collaborator Maarten Seghers, are pre-recorded pieces mashing orchestra with electronica. 

Covid paranoia and solitude, and the memory loss associated with coping with the disease creep into the drama, as characters don half-costumes and stumble and stutter through multicultural, class-clashing relationships. But while it’s bloody and confusing, there is enough love despite Billy’s Violence to keep looking for more.