A Risky 'Coriolanus' Pays Off

A very risky version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus blew across the Loeb Mainstage last weekend, featuring eerie music, shocking slideshows, vinyl costumes, and a set that looked like a construction site. Fortunately, more than enough talent and Shakespearean savvy were poured into this post-modern production to make all the creative risks pay off.

Director Todd Olson obviously knows his Shakespeare. Even though the play is taken out of its original Roman context, the Bard speaks for himself--even without togas and Roman columns, the play's fundamental themes remain intact and powerful.

The proficient cast was largely responsible for the play's success in making an Elizabethan tragedy accessible to modern audiences. Most of the play rested on the performance of Brett Egan '99, who, decked in a leather jacket and silver pants, made an intense Coriolanus. Egan's job was not an easy one, given the complexity of his role: Coriolanus is a Roman general who returns from war to find himself adored by the people, but his popularity causes petty political jealousy among the consuls (Taya Weiss '99 and Ryan McCarthy '97), which leads to his banishment.

In addition to his struggle for power and respect, Coriolanus suffers from a host of more personal problems. His relationship with his strong-willed mother (Nora Zimmet '00) borders on incest. He ignores his doting wife (Monica Henderson '99). While dealing with the onslaught of all of these issues, Coriolanus must also consider whether or not he should join forces with his recent enemy Aufidius (Bashir Salahuddin '98) to recapture Rome.

Coriolanus' life is complicated further by the play's one serious alteration of the original text. Menenius (Dana Gotlieb '97), intended by Shakespeare to be Coriolanus' male friend, was here depicted as his female lover. Gotlieb does well with the role, but the change seems unnecessary.

Egan's performance took all of these troubling factors into account; his Coriolanus was neither purely good nor purely evil, so that the play became a tragedy about a flesh-and-blood human being rather than a superficial historical figure.

Weiss and McCarthy revelled in their roles as the dastardly consuls, sneaking around the stage in dirty, gaudy orange suits while manipulating the people of Rome. They offered a severely satirical portrait of political corruption. Zimmet's performance as Volumnia, Coriolanus' mother, matched Egan's in intensity. Zimmet proved extremely capable of fleshing out her character's witty lines, as well as her questionable relationship with Coriolanus.

The outstanding Crimson Dance team appeared twice in well-choreographed segments, which remarkably were not out of place in the play. The dancers, clad in solid black, seemed representative of the rapidity with which the drama heads towards its inevitably tragic end.

A haunting orchestral score, composed by Andrew Hopson, was also been added to the production, and effectively complemented the action. The set, featuring a background of metal scaffolds, similarly emphasized the bleak moral and political situation of the play. In this production's most overt addition to the text, a series of disturbing images, both modern and ancient, were projected across the stage, to demonstrate that societal ills are certainly not restricted to Corionlanus' time. This attempt to broaden the context of the play seemed too labored and obvious, and was less effective than the more subtle innovations.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of this production was that it succeeds in vitalizing a play considered by many critics as evidence that Shakespeare had exhausted the tragic vein. Coriolanus is about violence, power, politics, and pain, themes that are just as relevant to our 20th century America as they were to Shakespeare's Elizabethan England and to Ancient Rome. Carefully conceived and performed, Olson made Coriolanus feel like it was written yesterday. For a play that is almost 400 years old, there is no higher mark of success.