I'm Titus. Where's Ronicus? That's right, folks: it's the Dachshund Shakespeare players back again.

Now we present that compilation of murder, rape, mutilation, cannibalism (Shakespeare must have been having a really bad hair day when he wrote this one) Titus Andronicus.

The story begins with the Emperor's two sons, Saturninus and Bassanius, squabbling over the succession. Titus returns in triumph from the Gothic Wars with his captive, Queen Tamora of the Goths.

Titus and his family (the Androci) have lost many sons in the war, and Titus allows his sons to sacrifice Tamora's eldest son in memory of their departed brothers — despite Tamora's pleading.

Titus is offered the Emperorship, but refuses it, offering it (and Tamora, for good measure) to Saturninus.

Bassanius, Saturninus' brother, chooses this moment to run off with Titus' daughter, Lavinia. Titus' attempt to stop them is foiled by his son, Mutius, who dies for it. The rest of Rome is horrified by Titus' killing his son, and his initial refusal to have his body buried in the family tomb.

Tamora enters the fray as peacemaker ... but that's not what she really intends.

Later, Tamora has become Queen, and her two remaining sons have become princes. She also has a lover, Aaron, who overhears the two princes discussing Lavinia's attractions as he hides a bag on gold in the woods.

While she is out hunting, Tamora, and her two boys, Chiron and Demetrius (Don't ask me why two Goths have such Greek names!), run into Bassanius and Lavinia. She tells her sons that Bassanius and Lavinia have plotted against their mother's life.

Immediately springing to their mother's defense, Demetrius and Chiron kill Bassanius and throw his body in a convenient pit. They drag Lavinia off to rape her. Tamora is deaf to Lavinia's pleading.

Aaron leads two of Titus' sons, Quintus and Martius, to the pit containing Bassanius' body. Martius falls in trying to reach the body and Quintus falls in trying to get Martius out. (It's the pits!)

Tamora, accompanied by Saturninus and others "discovers" the body and the brothers in the pit. Then Tamora "finds" (remember what Aaron was doing?) a bag of gold and a letter, which make it seem that the brothers waylaid and murdered Bassanius.

A short time later, Marcus, another member of the Androci, discovers his cousin Lavinia in the forest. The Gothic princes have cut her tongue out and her hands off so she cannot tell who raped her.

Titus pleads for his sons' lives, although his remaining son, Lucius, wants to fight for their freedom. Marcus brings in the maimed Lavinia, who knows her brothers are innocent but cannot speak to save her brothers' lives.