After foisting on us last summer an abysmal Antony and Cleopatra, in which only one minor player could speak the verse acceptably, the Royal Shakespeare Company is back in top form with its current production of Coriolanus. Although it deals with the Rome of around 500 BCE, there are no togas here. In an acknowledged bow to filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, director David Farr has chosen to set the play in the world of Japanese samurai. In this violent and sanguinary work, designer and costumer Ti Green has provided a relatively uncluttered venue dominated by a blood-red upstage panel, where the actors wear kimonos and obis, and at appropriate spots are accompanied by Keith Clouston's flute-and-drum music reminiscent of the Noh drama.
With daring anachronism, Farr also employs tennis racquets, espresso cups, cigarillos, confetti, and old-fashioned typewriters. Yet everything combines to work with supreme effectiveness.
In the title role of a man who is a heroic warrior but an inept politician, Greg Hicks is magnificent. At "Now, Mars, I prithee make us quick in work," he holds his sword aloft; and when he is successful in battle he appears with his face and bare torso bathed in blood. He really knows how to speak the play's language, with all its extreme arrogance and vitriol. When the plebeians whom he despises banish him, he really lets fly with, "You common cry of curs." And when he storms off proclaiming, "There is a world elsewhere," he indicates to a typist to make note of what he has said. As Aufidius, Coriolanus' enemy, then ally, and then enemy again, Chuk Iwuji is splendid -- powerfully manly yet imparting a hint of homoeroticism by embracing Coriolanus at one point. Richard Cordery is excellent as the would-be mollifier Menenius, and there is fine work from Tom Mannion and Simon Coates as the tribunes.
As Coriolanus' domineering mother Volumnia, Alison Fiske comes close to the late Irene Worth, who set the standard for the role. Hartley T. A. Kemp's dramatic lighting is a big plus. All in all, this is the most impressive of all the Coriolanus productions in my experience.
