Robert Tanitch reviews Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at National Theatre/Olivier Theatre.

Robert Tanitch reviews Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at National Theatre/Olivier Theatre.

Shakespeare’s last tragedy and most political play has never been popular with the general theatregoer. It usually works best at times of national strife when Left and Right find they can use its political arguments for their own ends.

The play, set in 490BCE, has often been modernised. Coriolanus has been identified with Sir Walter Raleigh, Napoleon, Hitler and Mussolini. The trouble-making tribunes have been cast as journalists, trade unionists, secret policemen and spin-doctors.

Stagings in the past have been updated to the English Civil War and the French Revolution. In 1934 various French anti-republican groups persuaded the Comédie-Française to stage the play. The performance led to demonstrations in the streets.

Coriolanus, a great warrior, proud and arrogant, knows his value to Rome and has an absolute contempt for the common people which, fatally, he does not attempt to disguise. The idea of humbling himself in the market place, in an ancient rite of standing before them in sackcloth and ashes and displaying his wounds, is anathema to him.

A victim of a violent temper, he is incapable of acting mildly. He is accused of being a traitor and banished. He retorts by banishing Rome. “There is a world elsewhere!” he declares and joins Rome’s enemy, the Volscians.

Lindsay Turner’s modern production is notable for designer E S Devlin’s huge columns, which look so solid when they are not. They rise and fall to reveal a museum of Roman art on plinths. Enormous photos of faces in close-up are projected on its walls. The stylised battle scenes are effective. The plebs lack numbers and conviction. Grandeur is missing.

It is good to see David Oyelowo back on stage after a long absence. He speaks the verse well; but he is too likeable, too nice, too decent, too mild, not supercilious enough, not contemptuous enough, to be Coriolanus. Neither is there any suggestion of homosexual tension between him and his great rival, Aufidius, a Volscian general.

The most confident performance is by Peter Forbes as Menenius, Coriolanus’s mentor and devoted friend, who begs Coriolanus not to attack Rome and is rejected.

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