Coriolanus @ National Theatre, London
Epic and filmic in style, David Oyelowo gives us fantastic vigorous stage fight scenes, a beautiful speaking voice and regal dignity blasting everyone else out of the water.
Problem is, I’ve seen Toby Stephens’ Napoleonic set Coriolanus and nothing else will do. This production was clearly giving Gladiator II a good run for its money with mirrored golden textures, dramatic shadows and lighting, 1930’s modernist-inspired classical concrete for the set, and fire pits a plenty. Pamela Nomvete was splendid too as Coriolanus’s mother, strong, proud and again full of dignity, and the child actor playing Coriolanus’s son was charming.
The rest of the cast — not so sure about, and I wonder if the style overpowered them all. I noticed that the majority of the cast played with their backs to the audience for much of the production — face to face speaking between actors had been chosen for a lot of the scenes. The majority of the cast also seem to play to the people in the middle of the front row only. It was noticeable that David Oyelowo and splendid general Titus Laritus (Jo Stone-Fewings) looked out and spoke to everyone, engaging and making eye contact.
David Oyelowo was wonderful, go and see it for him alone — reposing royally in a throne-like chair at the back of the stage amidst shadows and flaming fire pits; appearing in disguise at his enemy’s feast, humble in dress and yet still impressive; smashing his shield into his fallen enemy; spectacularly fighting his enemy with swords, leaps and fists, baffled by the illogicality of the mob/the people he was fighting for. However, the wider cast during the battle scene seemed to stand around too long not doing very much, and whilst the production loved slow-mo effects, there were some odd choices of direction which slowed things down or distracted. A soldier was clearly mortally wounded by Coriolanus only to get up, stagger to the back and fight again. At another point, a man at the back stood holding a bench for ages — for no reason at all, as the room was being put together. At another point, Coriolanus's very campy, possibly comic, enemy tied his tie for ages — clearly needs tie tying lessons! These seemed to be scene time fillers, and also a bit pointless.
On the other hand, the spectacle really was spectacular. When the women came to plead with Coriolanus, causing him to betray his new ally — they had the most enormous golden headdresses on, alongside flowing black gowns. Definitely not ancient Greece and Rome by this point, but spectacular none the less. This felt more Minoan? The soldiers had some odd helmets on — I could only think of Judoons, not Romans — again not classical in a classical setting, but going for visual oomph. For the rest of the time, the setting was modernist military with a hint of classical, which is fine as they were going for simple in some things, and impressive effects in others. The use of video and screens was a bit tedious and felt more obligatory than part of the production itself, though when the link went wrong, we learnt that the ‘Zoom’ meeting cast was live! Classical meets tapping away at laptop comms. The cube with video footage (in a kind of news montage) projected onto it at the start of the show was more effective in setting the scene.
All was staged within a classical museum, sweetly referenced at the end by a security guard shooing off a curious small boy and revealing what I think is a statue of the hero of the piece. There was even a contemporary reference to vandalism of art in political protest at the beginning, when that great symbol of Rome (the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus) was covered in paint.
Most enjoyable was when Coriolanus had enough of his ungrateful people and literally jumped off the stage and strode off up the auditorium steps — this was a truly great moment. Wonderful! He equally did a great stride into the distance through a very glary, smoky door. Enjoyable too were Coriolanus’s political enemies being all a tremble — for most of the time…
I felt as if the text involving Coriolanus’s wife had been cut — we got a bit of her fretting for her husband to come back and being a bit dismissed by her mother-in-law and ladies. Not so much of Coriolanus and his wife together — which made it feel as though she came on stage only to exit again, dragging her butterfly-mauling son behind her. (Though in truth it was more to get out of the way of the fire pits and battle scene being set up!) The bit at the end where the ungrateful mob tear Coriolanus to pieces was also a bit underpowered, purely because it didn’t seem to be played to the full theatre, taking place to one side of the stage. From further away, it looked a bit like a mass hug which went very wrong, though the revealing of Coriolanus's ‘dead’ body with torn clothes was very, very dramatic. As was the overhead drone like montage of Coriolanus’s finally honoured body being carried away, aloft, through the streets.
Overall, I believed in Coriolanus and his mother and the fire pits, not sure about the supporting cast, which may be down to either design choices or direction from Lyndsey Turner. Definitely felt like the production was trying to out Ridley Scott through doing Ridley Scott movie things on stage!
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