Watching Coriolanus in December 1989 was a strange experience. Though Terry Hands's production (with unspecified help from John Barton) did nothing whatsoever to conjure up the analogy, exercising admirable restraint, the events in Eastern Europe inevitably became a point of comparison. As the citizens of Rome flexed their political muscles in search of food and freedom from oppression, images from the countries of the dissolving Warsaw Pact whirled through my mind. The patrician world is, of course, nothing like a Soviet-supported regime but the exhilaration of the discovery of the power of mass protest and of the possibility of exerting a previously unsuspected control over government was powerfully present.
It was, though, present only in my mind as a reaction to the text; little on stage supported such a weighty comparison. For the production neither managed to explore the social context for the plebeian revolt nor established a coherent and significant relationship of antagonism between Coriolanus and the people. But when Sicinius asked "What is the city but the people?" there was a sudden moment of arrest in the impetus of the scene, a realization, shocked and excited, of the potential revolutionary power of the crowd, that could have been fed effectively into the rest of the production.76
The Tribunes, as Holland notes, were played by comic actors Joe Melia and Geoffrey Freshwater and were made ridiculous at every opportunity. Ripley suggests, however, that the production "demands attention for its postmodern deference to feminist politics. Women, who had almost invisibly swelled stage crowds for centuries, were not only present, but militantly active."77 He goes on, quoting again from Holland's perceptive review, that it was the women plebeians in Act 3 Scene 2
who provided the switch of mood against Coriolanus with the Third Citizen's speech divided between a group of women. In 5.1 there was a strong emphasis on the men arming for the threat of war and, by the end of the scene, a powerful image of the women left behind, the city unmanned ... Even more emphatically the voices of the Volscian people in 5.6 shouting against Coriolanus were all women, a female recognition of the costs of Coriolanus' actions by the people who are "widowed and unchilded" ... The Volscian women urged their men to attack Coriolanus who was knifed by Aufidius and then mobbed and beaten to death by the crowd.78
David Thacker's 1994 production at the Swan Theatre with Toby Stephens as Coriolanus was set and costumed as a historical period combining French Revolution and Empire. The Swan setting, as Russell Jackson explained, served the play well:
The debate scenes benefited from the intimacy of the thrust stage and galleried auditorium, while the space was sufficient to accommodate the battle in the first act or to emphasize the isolation of Caius Martius as he stood in his gown of humility waiting for "voices." In this theatre the audience could be appealed to as though they were the Roman public, and the director capitalized on this by placing the plebeians around the auditorium, making us complicit in the decisions taken, as it were, on our behalf.79
The gallery was hung with bloody banners proclaiming the revolutionary slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and an "exploded back wall"80 at the back of the set which revealed a sketch of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. In some ways this was an incompletely satisfactory image since "Delacroix's image was a response to the failed revolution of 1830, not the 1790s." Its potency "lay not only in the symbolism of the revolution in arms" but in the symbolic power it accords a woman: "Delacroix's Liberty became, as it were, the iconic expression of the control over the political world that Volumnia would have wished to have."81
Jackson describes how Thacker managed to set up political parallels without attempting to elaborate them too minutely:
The Napoleonic figure of Caius Martius (Toby Stephens) was first glimpsed at the back of the stage, scowling as grain poured from above into a pit centerstage. The store was covered before the starving common people could get their hands on it. With this Thacker provided a neat motivation for the plebeians' discontent while offering a vivid image for the play's opening scene, but he wisely avoided further elaboration on the play's sketchy political economy.82
The representation of the plebeians was careful and considered:
Thacker made the citizens consistent in their opinions: it was the same "voices" who objected to Coriolanus's banishment that, when told in 4.6 of his march against Rome, said they were reluctant to make him go. The arguments with which the play opened were serious and seemed to come from genuine hardship, and the disgruntled plebeians listened to Menenius with respect but no real sign of conviction. Caius Martius's arrival cut the debate short in any case. At the end of the first scene, the citizens showed no enthusiasm for the impending campaign against the Volsces but (following the Folio direction) chose instead to "steal away."83
4. David Thacker production, 1994. "The Napoleonic figure of Caius Martius (Toby Stephens) was first glimpsed at the back of the stage, scowling as grain poured from above into a pit centerstage" against a sketch of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.
David Farr's 2003 production, also in the Swan, took its inspiration from the traditions of samurai warriors and Japanese Noh theater. Russell Jackson saw it as offering "an articulate, sardonic view of heroism, which rose on occasion to great power" and described the striking opening scene:
The stage was lacquered a rich, smooth red, and colored banners hung from the gallery at the back of the platform. With the opening clash of percussion, three figures were revealed at the rear, seated on stools with their backs to the audience. The citizens, roused by a vehement female worker wielding an ax, were stationed around the auditorium during the first exchanges and then moved onto the platform.84
Greg Hicks's Coriolanus was universally admired, but some critics had reservations about the Japanese themed setting:
As the programme and the costumes emphasise, this Coriolanus is a samurai, and good samurai don't cry. The trouble is that, as a result, Rome has become a half-modern, half-antique Japan. On display are rather a lot of cheap kimonos, obis and such like as well as cigarettes, coffee cups, tennis rackets and, for the secretaries taking notes at Coriolanus's trial, 1920s typewriters. And the scene in which our exiled hero comes disguised as a beggar to Aufidius's house, has become a none-too-funny blend of commedia, kabuki and Bruce Lee.85
Russell Jackson, however, saw this as a deliberate process of undercutting of the "oriental" formality of the earlier part of the play:
The first sign of this was one of the servants in the Capitol lighting his cigarette from the flame that had been placed centerstage. Modern props and costuming indicated the process. The typists in the scene in which Coriolanus is accused of treason marked a further falling-off from the antique codes of honor, as did the cafe table and coffee cups, the citizen's shorts and the tennis rackets in the "Rome at peace" sequence, and the worker's cloth cap adopted by Menenius in what seemed now to be the People's Socialist Republic of Rome. The tribunes wore natty new costumes that conveyed the sense of their now being successful bureaucrats. The representation of the Volsces was less successful: they seemed to inhabit a colder, windier territory, and the Volscian senators' costumes suggested a society less civilized than that of Rome.86
Coriolanus was by chance the final play to be presented at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 2007 before its closure for major refurbishment. Gregory Doran and designer Richard Hudson extended the stage with steps leading down into the auditorium, and they deployed this more flexible space to good effect:
The play opens with a bang as peasants burst down the aisles onto a stage filled with lavish terracotta-coloured stone walls, which open like doors and have shutters which snap up and down. The scenery is offset by costumes in orange, red and grey ... And actors continue to make their entrances and exits through the audience throughout, sweeping them into the action.87
The set was impressive, like blood or rust-streaked red and gray marble. The Romans and Volsces wore indistinguishable schematic Roman costumes: Romans in red, Volsces in gray. The plebeians were strongly played and ca
refully chosen to represent different constituencies: men, women, black and white. Two of the Roman soldiers joined the plebeian revolt against Coriolanus. The tribunes (Fred Ridgeway and Darren Tunstall) were played with an ambiguous combination of humor, knowingness, and sincerity but the focus of the production was on Coriolanus and his relationship with Aufidius, even more than his relationship with his mother.
Sons and Others
Historical productions of the play, notably John Philip Kemble's eighteenth-century productions with himself in the title role and his sister, Sarah Siddons, as Volumnia, romanticized Coriolanus as a noble hero. Twentieth-century sensibilities proved more skeptical, holding the role and character up to greater scrutiny, especially in light of post-Freudian theories. John Ripley argues that Barton's (1967), Trevor Nunn's (1972), and Terry Hands's (1977) productions all deliberately eschewed the play's politics, focusing on the central role not in order to romanticize it, but as part of contemporary society's drive to demythologize "its collective persona," thus making the "antihero ... the new protagonist."88 Part of this process involved "a narcissistic quest for individual liberation and relationship as an antidote to the spiritual desolation of modern life." Within this move, "Martius was a prime candidate for exploitation."89
Ripley goes on to argue that
All three ignore the play's political resonance in favor of a revisionist critique of Roman history and the exploitation of the phenomenon of alienation. All place Martius at the center of the action, but unlike romantic interpretations, invite not identification but estrangement: audiences at Barton's and Nunn's productions were repelled by an antihero; at Hands's, awed by an alien superhero.90
Barton's 1967 revival revealed a stylistic rather than ideological debt to Brecht:
The repellent features of the play, and of Martius in particular, long glossed over in British and American productions ... were now ruthlessly exploited by Barton as a revisionist gesture. From a Rome just emerging from prehistory, Barton culled the bleak apercu that humankind's triumph over nature freed it only for the pursuit of power.91
Barton's own program notes, however, tell a different story:
If we see the other protagonists clearly the way is open to seeing how far Coriolanus himself is their victim and wherein he is nobler, and at bottom, more human. It's often said the play is dry and inflexible because he does not change or mature. Surely he is the one character who basically does change? The others are gradually revealed for what they are. He, though he resists change or self-knowledge (and his temperament is unalterable), is forced by circumstance and his own nature to know himself, and to begin to grow. In that sense he is like Lear. Surely the centre of the play is to be found in Coriolanus's lines:
"I melt, and am not
Of stronger earth than others."
His fate is ultimately tragic: victim of the waste, self-deception and muddle of politics, and the domination of his mother.92
Repellent as he may appear, Barton suggests, we should see Coriolanus as victim of a brutal and brutalizing social order, finally acknowledging his humanity but at the inevitable cost of his life. The mother's role in reproduction both physiological and ideological is crucial. Mothers such as Volumnia must sacrifice their humanity in order to sacrifice their sons. The degree to which they come to understand this will affect interpretations of the role and development of character. Postwar productions have not shied away from the play's violence, often indeed sensationalizing it; they have swung between poles of representation of the Volsces, traditionally seen as Rome's less civilized neighbor. They are just as often seen as Rome's mirror image rather than its savage "Other." Productions have played with their appearance and the homoerotic potential of the relationship between Coriolanus and Aufidius.
Ian Richardson (Coriolanus) and Edward Cicciarelli (Aufidius) looked like blond-haired, blue-eyed, deeply tanned twins in Barton's production. Critic Alan Brien saw Richardson's Coriolanus as
a glacial prefect, dedicated to an impossible code of honour, dominated by his mother, unconsciously suppressing a strong crush on a rival schoolfellow, fated to break down when the antagonism between his unacknowledged passions and his boasted ideals becomes too strong to support.
Ian Richardson made up as the blond twin of Aufidius, gives a remarkable impersonation of a man who seems positively varnished under a veneer of upper-class correctness which applies only to social equals and does not forbid the kicking, insulting, even killing on the spot, of inferiors who do not understand or respect his standards. He speaks that peculiar Coriolanian verse, arid, grinding, abrasive language with sudden fluid of oiled movement, with immense intelligence in a careful, metallic voice which never sacrifices sense to sound.93
5. Ian Richardson (Coriolanus) and Edward Cicciarelli (Aufidius) looked like blond-haired, blue-eyed, deeply tanned twins in John Barton's 1967 RSC production.
One critic thought his "most impressive moment"
when he cracks, like an obstinate Brazil nut, in the jaws of his mother ... All the pride and valour and contempt are shaken out of him in appalling sobs. The she-dragon mother herself is played by Catherine Lacey like an ancient mistress of foxhounds, glorying in her son's wounds, like a huntress blooding her young.94
Irving Wardle regarded it as "an interpretation that earns sympathy for the least likeable of all Shakespeare's tragic heroes."95
John Barber was one of a number of critics unimpressed by Ian Hogg's performance in Trevor Nunn's production:
It is a criticism of Ian Hogg's small, wiry Coriolanus that it does not dominate the restless effects. Callous, impatient, ineffably proud, his high, flat voice expresses all the man's quirkiness. But not for a second, any of his greatness. Once when he was referred to as noble, the audience, understandably, laughed.
Without question, the performance of the night was the Volumnia of Margaret Tyzack, notably in the great scene at the end when she pleads for her son to spare Rome from his anger. "I was moved withal," said Aufidius afterwards. Indeed, so was I.96
John Mortimer, however, was won over:
When Mr Ian Hogg first appeared I thought he lacked magnetism, and his voice the operatic qualities for the role. But later I became convinced by this mother's boy-wonder, to whom wars and politics are fun and excitement until he is dragged into fury and disaster by the treacherous undertow of his own personality. His final surrender to Volumnia's persuasions became particularly moving when you realised that part of the self he claimed was finally the need to do what his mother asked.97
Peter Thomson also saw him as a different sort of Coriolanus, a "temperamental sporting star, a George Best sulkily crossing Manchester to help the welcoming City defeat a shaken United."98 When the production transferred to the Aldwych, Hogg was replaced by Nicol Williamson whose charismatic presence produced a more evenly balanced production.
Alan Howard gave a widely acclaimed performance in 1977. This is Irving Wardle's assessment:
We are used to seeing actors searching out Coriolanus's weak spots. One point about Mr Howard's hero is that he is a strong man full stop. There is nothing reductive in the portrait. That obviously goes for the battle scenes which he dispatches with that trumpet voice which is the most thrilling sound at present to be heard on the English stage.
It applies even more to his behaviour in Rome. Whereas everyone else is enacting a social role, Mr Howard strictly observes his character's claim: "I am the man I play" ... He is incapable of doing otherwise. Trying briefly to follow his mother's instructions and adopt a mask of humility, he turns into an infant barely able to walk. Finally he is not a mother's boy. There is no great emotional crack-up to Volumnia's supplications ... He simply chooses to spare Rome and is never more thoroughly in command of the situation than when he embraces his family under the baleful eye of Julian Glover's Aufidius. He knows it means death, and it is he who cheerfully impales himself on Aufidius's sword at the end.
With its hand-holding duels and arrays of studde
d black leather, this is an uninhibitedly romantic treatment of the play; it is also the most exciting I have ever seen.99
6. Terry Hands production, 1977. "The production concluded ominously with the young Martius, now dressed like a young warrior, holding Volumnia's hand, the promise of the future," with Maxine Audley (Volumnia) and Fleur Chandler (Virgilia).
Carol Chillington also found the production and Howard's performance impressive but unsympathetic:
There is no repository of sympathy in this production. Martius is bound to his mother not by heartstrings, but by the rod of steel that runs up both their backbones ... No one is honest about his motives or actions in this play, so we don't know who to trust. And the production doesn't tell us. Instead, brilliantly, it brings to our attention all the acting imagery embedded in the play and shows it to us as a metaphoric extension of the characters' wanton self-deception. No one is honest except Coriolanus. Only he disdains compromise and makes us think pride a malicious word for integrity. In this consists his magnificence and his tragedy, his utter isolation.100
The production concluded ominously with the young Martius, now dressed like a young warrior, holding Volumnia's hand, the promise of the future.
Charles Dance played Coriolanus in Hands's 1989 production. His performance was generally felt to lack conviction:
Again and again Hands used stagey devices to increase the menace and authority of Dance's performance ... But such devices only served to emphasize all the more strongly that Dance needed such support to cover his own deficiencies of technique and imagination. At his best as the child of Barbara Jefford's superbly overpowering mother, a performance from her of tigerish authority and control, Dance found it easy to underline the potential comedy of, say, the struggle between them in 3.2; "Look, I am going" [156] sounded like nothing so much as "look I really am off to tidy my room," instantly made serious by the force of Volumnia's implied threat of giving up on him in "Do your will" [160].101