Classless

National Theatre Live: Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Tom Hiddleston. Directed by Josie Rourke.

Josie Rourke’s production of Coriolanus makes it hard to tell the patricians from the plebeians, since Rourke does little or nothing to distinguish the ruling class in appearance, manner or otherwise. Volumnia wears a nondescript housedress; Menenius’ clothes have a second-hand look; Martius is angry but not haughty; and none of them shows any special marks of breeding. Apparently, Rourke finds class distinctions to be so invidious that she disdains to represent them, even in a play of which they are the raison d’etre. Of course, the text draws the necessary distinctions, but since the production doesn’t bother to realize them, they remain largely notional throughout. One would never have imagined a Coriolanus set in a classless society, but that is the oxymoronic spectacle on display at the Donmar Warehouse.

Rourke is equally unattuned to the play’s valorization of military prowess, commitment and courage (i.e., heroism), all of which she sees as macho savagery. An interpolated vignette depicts Martius standing beneath a shower, washing off the accumulated gore of Corioles while wincing at his newly-inflicted wounds. This sets up the production’s conclusion, in which Aufidius strings Martius up by the heels, guts him like a pig, and then gleefully showers in his blood as the lights fade to black. Rourke can achieve this final image only through heavy cutting, conflation of scenes, an incoherent mismatching of word and action, and a reduction of Aufidius’ complex emotions to a simple delight in barbarism. For her, these are small prices to pay in order to flaunt her conviction that warriors are atavistic brutes, an equation that seems a trifle simplistic, not to say cheap. In an interview shown during the intermission, Rourke appears pleased that her Martius, Tom Hiddleston, has been dubbed “the Sexiest Man Alive” by MTV News; and of course it was she who cast him in the title role. But why trade upon your leading man’s masculinity while denigrating the very modes by which it is expressed in the play?

This raises a more basic question, viz., Why did Rourke wish to direct Coriolanus when she is so clearly out of sync with what the play is about? Perhaps she was inspired by the difficulties of mounting an epic drama on the Donmar’s postage-stamp of a stage. Well and good, but she has responded to this challenge with empty posturing and a bottomless reserve of clichés. In the opening moments, a child (Martius’ son) enters and paints a large square on the floor by outlining the edges of the stage in red. Since the square is congruent with the stage’s own borders, its delineation of an acting space is pointless, however portentous, and its neat red lines are in no way suggestive of blood. Of course, geometric figures on the stage floor are hardly original: witness the “Magic Circle” in Trevor Nunn’s 40 year-old Macbeth. Quite familiar, too, is the use of a child to introduce a play riddled with violence: see Jane Howell’s 30 year-old Titus for the BBC. For Rourke, everything old is new again. In fact, some things are merely old.

But wait, there’s more (or less). The entire cast immediately enters to assume sitting or standing positions at the rear of the stage, from which actors move forward to perform their individual scenes. This metatheatrical mustering of the acting company was all the rage some decades ago until it died of overexposure, but apparently it wasn’t buried deeply enough. The rear wall of the set bears graffiti, a common feature of classical productions in the 60s and 70s. Back-projections soon make their appearance, while pounding techno-music covers the scene-changes. And so it goes, Rourke ceaselessly deploying the stale conventions of yesteryear as if they were still fresh and vital, hoping that sheer profusion will offset their triteness and pass for creative energy.

Could the production be justified as a showcase for Tom Hiddleston, the Sexiest Man Alive? Alas, a fundamental pallor and blandness undermine his claim to that title. For the rest, Hiddleston gives a clenched performance, speaking throughout in low, menacing tones suggestive of a simmering charisma that he does not possess. His line-readings are lucid, if monochromatic, and he is in good physical shape; but he lacks variety and wit, and is finally (make you a bore of me?) a little dull.

Most of the other leading roles are miscast. Deborah Findlay turns the unsettling Volumnia into a dear little woman without a formidable or frightening bone in her body. When Volumnia describes herself as a “hen” that “cluck’d [Martius] to the wars,” the effect should be ironic (a “falconer who launched him from a gloved fist” would be a better characterization), but as vocalized by Findlay, the homely trope is all-too-appropriate. Mark Gatiss’ airy, lightweight Menenius is too young to be a putative father-figure for Martius, and too diffident to be credible as a man who pacifies a raging mob single-handedly. In a strained attempt to inject some liveliness into Martius’ recessive wife Virgilia (surely the most thankless female role in all of Shakespeare), Rourke has cast the fiercely Nordic Birgitte Hjort Sørensen in the part. Ms. Sørensen works hard to find moments of authority and passion, but the material isn’t there, and she comes across as a strident cipher. The other performances range from competent to abysmal, the worst being Hadley Fraser’s vulgar, sneaking pipsquesk of an Aufidius. Far from a lion that Martius would be proud to hunt, he is a hyena that no self-respecting warrior would deign to kick.

The most interesting turns are those of Elliot Levey and Helen Schlesinger as the tribunes Brutus and “Veluta,” here feminized from Shakespeare’s Velutus. What impresses is their sheer unflappability: even when Martius is at the gates of Rome, they do not lose their coolness, but continue to calmly weigh their options and thoughtfully consider remedial measures. Like cockroaches, they will survive the Apocalypse, their self-possession assuring us that mediocrity can always find a home and flourish. But then this production and its rapturous reception are proof enough of that.