Coriolanus
Page 19
After his capitulation to Volumnia, Aufidius insults Coriolanus in terms designed to wound his pride and dignity: "thou boy of tears" (5.6.115). Coriolanus is stung, repeating "Boy" three times in his attempted rebuttal of Aufidius' charge. To most directors this, together with his successful military career, has suggested a Coriolanus of relatively mature years, a seasoned warrior around forty. David Thacker, however, decided to take it literally and cast the twenty-eight-year-old Toby Stephens in the role. In a production centrally concerned with class, Stephens played the part with an unforgettable sneer on his face and curl of his upper-class lip. Russell Jackson summed his performance up as "superbrat":
Toby Stephens was a strident, energetically disdainful, and very young Coriolanus, exuding the naive self-assurance of a school captain who excels effortlessly on the playing field and looks forward to a life of hero worship. He was also remarkably good-looking. With a Martius this young, the impressive military record became miraculous, and we lost the possibility of a Coriolanus whose long career of both taints and honors was now coming spectacularly to a head. What we got instead was a superbrat, but this had its own advantages. The hero's callowness counted as a sort of political innocence, nearly enough to excuse his brashness. This was a Coriolanus whom one could not easily dismiss as a functionary of a militaristic state or a crazed fighter driven by his own testosterone. With the admiring smooth-tongued Menenius around to excuse each new feat of haughtiness, he might have gotten away with a great deal. He was a credible political threat.102
Having played Aufidius with distinction in Peter Hall's (1984) National Theatre production, Greg Hicks proved a compelling Coriolanus in 2002:
This is a tremendous performance. Hicks combines the heroic simple-mindedness and intemperate rage of a proud, illiterate zombie with the turbulent feelings of an emotionally underdeveloped boy-man and the awesome physical control and intelligence of a great actor.
He speaks the play's craggy, sinewy language with a clarity, an emotional commitment and an intellectual vigour that I have never seen equalled.103
Benedict Nightingale had misgivings about the sheer quantity of gore used, "He appears to have swum three lengths in the stuff,"104 while Paul Taylor thought Alison Fiske "a more sensitive than normal Volumnia" who "seems to understand the terrible cost of the climb-down she has exacted," concluding:
the production has bags of energy and bite and ends with a deeply moving depiction of the hero's obdurate integrity. In the climactic sword fight with Aufidius, he's felled by a cheating bullet from behind. Twice he drags himself to his feet to continue the contest and twice more he's shot. This haunting sequence symbolising the superannuation of the hero's values leaves you feeling that the world will not be an unequivocally better place without him.105
William Houston's boyish looks in Doran's 2007 production belied his thirty-eight years. Robert Hanks argues that "crowd scenes and cameos are invested with a sense of irony, as if the characters, including the plebeians, are perfectly aware that in the drama of politics they too have their parts to play," and he goes on to argue:
Something of the same spirit infects Houston's Coriolanus. In one sense, the point of the play is that Coriolanus takes himself too seriously: obsessed with making war and his own image of himself, he won't stoop to the petty business of making politics--though all he has to do is tell the truth about his glorious deeds ... Houston hardly looks the conventional warrior--with his wide, thin-lipped mouth, bulging eyes and sinewy physique, he conjures up Zippy from Rainbow as drawn by William Blake. But as the play goes on, his aggression and penchant for bloodshed are persuasive, to a degree that leaves you sympathising with the people of Rome--sure, he wins battles, but would you want this psycho in charge? He never quite throws off an air of amusement; he knows how excessive he is, and finds the spectacle entertaining.106
Michael Billington felt that the focus on the central role undercut the play's politics, but, despite that,
the production notches up several good points. There is no escaping the way Trevor White's Aufidius and Houston's hero are engaged in a permanent homoerotic combat. [Janet] Suzman quietly humanises Volumnia, and Timothy West plays Menenius as a singularly testy patrician.107
Referring to the imminent closure of Elizabeth Scott's 1932 New Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Billington adds, "This closes a chapter of Stratford history with dignity and style."
THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH GREGORY DORAN AND DAVID FARR
Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He began his career as an actor, before becoming associate director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as associate and subsequently chief associate director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. His 2007 Coriolanus for the RSC featured William Houston as Coriolanus, Trevor White as Aufidius, Timothy West as Menenius, and Janet Suzman as Volumnia.
David Farr is a writer and director, and has had an extraordinarily prolific career for such a young talent. He was artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London, from 1995 to 1998, moving on to the position of joint artistic director of Bristol Old Vic from 2002 to 2005. He became artistic director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in 2005, where his productions included Water, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Birthday Party, The Magic Carpet, Ramayana, The Odyssey, and a new version of Kafka's Metamorphosis. As a playwright, his work includes The Nativity, Elton John's Glasses, and Crime and Punishment in Dalston. David joined the RSC as an associate director in 2009, since which time he has directed Greg Hicks as Leontes in The Winter's Tale (2009) and as the title role in King Lear (2010), though his first work with the company came in between his tenures at the Gate and the Old Vic, writing Night of the Soul for the company, which was produced at the Pit Theatre in 2001. He returned to direct an award-winning production of Coriolanus (also starring Greg Hicks) in 2002 which he discusses here.
Did you and your designer opt for a very Roman setting and look?
Farr: No, but I was looking for a world that had a strong social and political hierarchy. I wasn't interested in updating the play to a time where the modernity of the world somehow forced the lead character into becoming unacceptable, because for me the fascination of the play was the fact that I was morally very attracted to him and at the same time repelled by him. I was deeply attracted to his moral rigor and his refusal to bow to what he sees as easy populist choices. In order not to make that seem horrific or fascist--as he is so often portrayed--you have to find a world in which what he is standing for has depth, history, and meaning. I made quite a bold choice to set it in Samurai Japan. It then became very specific, setting it in nineteenth-century Japan, toward the end of the Samurai era, which socially is the equivalent of the end of the feudal era in Europe, although the detail of that specific setting was nothing that the audience necessarily needed to know. The visual language in the play therefore showed a development from a totally purist Samurai language to something with increasing creeping modernity, symbolized by different weaponry and, most crucially, by two typewriters that I think became the visual centerpieces showing that development.
Doran: Rome is a metaphor. Shakespeare chooses a subject with a Roman setting, but clearly engages profoundly with the political issues of his own time. The play works in a startlingly contemporary way because we can still reapply that metaphor to our own times if we choose to do so. However, setting the play in a different time period, or updating it to a specific historical period and trying to appropriate a particular political system, can run the risk of inviting unhelpful comparisons; the parallels you hope to draw can confuse more than they illuminate. On the other hand, if you invent a peri
od or put it in its own historical setting, you may run the danger of exoticizing the play and concealing the intensely political and satirical portrait of a society that Shakespeare has created.
My designer Richard Hudson and I decided to use the basic metaphor of Ancient Rome, filtered to some extent through the Jacobean period (so togas were worn over doublets). We didn't want Hollywood Rome; this is not the Augustan city after all, but a more primitive, volatile, warmongering state. So we created a series of receding walls punctuated with doors. The walls were metallic, striated with a sort of rusty red, echoing the bloody conflicts which Rome had undergone, scarred like Coriolanus' own body with the glorious wounds of battle. These walls also created a sense of the bustling streets, which could be populated and filled, but which could also close down the space.
And was there a significant design difference between the scenes in Rome and the world elsewhere?
Farr: No, not at all. There was a bare red stage, a blood-red stage of wood. There were almost no scene changes of any significance whatsoever. It was largely sculpted by light, as I think is often best, particularly in the Swan, with simple use of furniture and development of the language of the world. There was some small use of vertical banners to create that sense of ritual, particularly in the procession when he returns home in triumph, moving into that more modern language of typewriters--what we called governmental furniture--where suddenly Coriolanus is becoming accountable to the people. It helped to show the journey on which Sicinius and Junius Brutus lead the people, discovering that a new accountability is possible and that an aristocratic system is not necessarily inevitable.
Doran: For Corioli we had a similar metallic look but two huge iron doors to represent the gates of Corioli, and we used them again for Antium in the second half. For Act 5, for the plain before the walls of Rome where the Volsci set up their encampment, we flew everything out and had the vast empty stage of the old RST (seen for the last time in its history in this production). It somehow echoed the barrenness of the relationships between Rome and the Volscians.
Did your production find itself taking sides in the disputes between patricians and plebeians, Coriolanus and the crowd?
Farr: I suppose my production was noted for being much more supportive, or at least sympathetic, toward him. I was determined to make him fully rounded, intelligent, and in a strange way a heroic character. He is heroic to me because, like a lot of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, he stands in defiance against certain easy moral choices. His flaw is that he stands with such pride and obstinacy that it destroys him. I don't feel that I sided with him but I feel that I saw the play through his eyes. I see it as the tragedy of a man who passionately believes in a system which has existed for years and years. I think Shakespeare would be far more sympathetic toward that than people may realize. Shakespeare has his deep conservative impulse as well as an extraordinary social liberal impulse and he doesn't know where he stands. He plays between these two impulses. I think that may come from his being from a family with a strong Catholic past, which is now buried and hidden, and he is moving into a much more modern Protestant world, which is in some sense more democratic. But he has these great longings back to that old world. It is pretty clear to me that Shakespeare doesn't love Junius Brutus or Sicinius. He didn't write them lovably; he writes them absolutely accurately and the points they make are entirely apposite and correct, but they're not lovable. Coriolanus is lovable in some slightly hard to define way: perhaps it's his honesty.
Doran: Coriolanus can be viewed from almost every political point of view. You can take a right-wing angle and side wholeheartedly with the patricians, a left-wing agenda and promote the play from the plebeians' angle--"What is the city but the people"--or indeed from a sort of nihilistic perspective, and view both sides as absurd in their own ways. I think Shakespeare doesn't come down on any one side. I think there is frequently a satirical tone, but the play is too complex, too multifaceted to be reduced to a single political perspective. Shakespeare sees both sides, empathizes with both, and yet is critical of both. Coriolanus seems to me to be closely akin to Troilus and Cressida in that respect, also in its dark humor and its cynical attitude to male posturing.
So I think it's crucial in production not to take sides. Your political affiliations or prejudices are likely to emerge anyway. But it is too easy to send up the plebs as a stupid, fickle mob. They have genuine grievances and are starving to death. At the same time it is very easy to be taken in by the warm affability of the apparently eminently trustworthy Menenius, whereas actually he is a wily, manipulative, reactionary old bastard. I think part of the success of Will Houston's performance [as Coriolanus] was his ability to marry the ruthless warrior on the battlefield with the volatile child in the drawing room.
So it is vital to see every character from their own point of view and not automatically believe the enemy propaganda about them. We found that job hardest with the tribunes. Was there ever a more self-serving, cowardly, vicious, pusillanimous pair in all literature? They are right to defend the people from the man who would "vent their musty superfluity" in battle; on the other hand, when they have secured Coriolanus' banishment from Rome they realize that they have effectively dismantled their nuclear deterrent only to have that same weapon, doubled in power, pointed right at their walls. The play is a rollercoaster ride in performance, a real thriller, if you engage passionately with the rhetoric, and invest each side with real conviction.
What was your take on Menenius and his fable of the body?
Farr: Menenius is trying to express, in as affable a way as possible, the point that the plebeians who feel hard done by and neglected are actually fundamentally connected to the aristocracy and in need of them. I suppose it is a conservative justification of what I have been describing. Menenius puts a delicate and kindly spin on what is actually a very tough worldview.
Doran: The fable of the body is a total fraud. If the senators are the belly of Rome, then their job is to distribute the nourishment through the arteries of the body to the outer extremities--the plebeians--and they are palpably not doing that. By hoarding corn they are depriving the plebeians of food and therefore threatening their survival. Unfortunately Menenius doesn't seem to be aware that the story actually works against him. Nor does the crowd happen to notice that this elegant fable cannot be comfortably applied.
And on the role of the Tribunes?
Farr: We played them as two highly skilled politicians who genuinely believe in the need for an increasingly transparent and accountable society and who are at a crucial moment in their society's history. They know that the old order and the old world is breaking down, they know that the introduction of technology is increasing accountability and increasing the democratic process. Therefore personally there are lots of opportunities for power which would not have been available to them before because they weren't from the aristocratic caste. So this mixture of genuine political idealism and personal ambition is what drives them. That's modern politics, isn't it? Most politicians have some element of political belief and an awful lot of personal ambition which gets confused so that trust in them starts to dribble away. That's very clearly what happens at the end of the play; they don't develop morally in the play in the way that Coriolanus does. We didn't parody or satirize them. I think some of Junius Brutus' speeches are very powerful and the actor, Simon Coates, was a highly skilled orator, very convincing in what he said. But at some level we knew instinctively from the language that this was a man who was driven primarily by ambition. In Junius Brutus and Sicinius you do recognize modern politicians. We all hear that language and associate it with the language of spin, or the way in which PR manipulates how information is communicated to the public, all the stuff that modern politics is all about. Coriolanus cares not one jot for that; he is only interested in his personal morality, and that belongs to a different era which we associate with despotism and tyranny. He associates it with an old aristocracy, a landed aristocracy that ha
s a God-given right to rule. Of course that is repellent to us now, but at the time that was not considered repellent.
Did you find one of the keys to the character of Coriolanus in his anger at being called a "boy"?
Farr: Greg Hicks and I became interested in his drive to self-definition as man and warrior. His two fears and fascinations were the threatened feminization and infantilization of him, which you see his mother do several times. It's completely possible to treat Coriolanus in a Freudian way. He is a man of fearless self-definition, trying to escape the haunting specters of woman and child. His relationship with his wife is far less sexual than his relationship with his mother. His relationship with Tullus Aufidius is an extraordinarily sexual relationship in some subliminal way. You can choose to overtly push that, it's in the language, particularly in Aufidius' language when they meet again. Interestingly, when things go wrong for Coriolanus is when he listens to his mother, who at two different moments appeals to him. In both cases she is the only person he listens to. It is a remarkable, strange, sexual relationship between them. It's worth mentioning here the Roman notion of virtue, which is so different to the Christian notion of virtue. Roman virtue literally means manliness; what it is to be a man. It is about bravery and honesty but it is not about compassion: that was what Christianity brought to the notion of virtue. Coriolanus in his terms loses his virtue in listening to his mother. In a literal sense he loses his manliness. The sexual confusion of that is absolutely fascinating but it only really works if you place it in a world and in a culture where that maleness and that virtue is something that is really esteemed and upheld as a paragon of what it is to be a man.
Doran: When Aufidius attacks Coriolanus and calls him a "boy of tears" the effect is devastating, not only because it is insulting but because underneath it there is a truth. Coriolanus in the end is a mummy's boy, is childlike, and naive in his belief that he can march over to the other side in a fit of pique and for no genuine principle, out of hurt pride, prosecute war on his own people. Aufidius' charge is wounding too because it comes from the man he loves, and it prompts from Caius Martius a vainglorious boast that "like an eagle in a dovecote" he "Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles."