Review of Josie Rourke's Coriolanus

(Yes, there are spoilers, but the text is four hundred years old, so deal with it.  Although if you're planning to see a screening of it, hold off for now, I do discuss specifics for the performance.)

I have had a bizarre combination of schooling in my life.  Theatre, film, back to theatre, English literature, and always, always, always Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is that which I live and breathe.  It flows through my blood as thick as the cells which sustain my life.  So when I heard that there would be a NatLive screening of Coriolanus, a part of me leapt at it.  A West End show, while living in Wales, for £11?  Not to mention it is most acutely known for its leading star, Tom Hiddleston.  Really this was a perfect storm to get me to spend money I said I wouldn’t spend.  There was only one real problem: I really didn’t like Coriolanus.

Okay, maybe that’s harsh.  Sorry, Will, its nothing personal, I could just never get into it.  I’ve tried on multiple occasions to read it, but it has never been a required text for any of my Shakespeare courses, and I’ve never had the wherewithal to manage it by myself.  Not to mention, there are almost never stagings of it, so I was confined to bookwork, which is, at least for me, the absolute worst way to fall into a Shakespeare play.  So hitherto, I’ve always harbored a secret dislike for Coriolanus. 

But eventually I kicked myself into going for it.  This play does combine everything I love: Shakespeare, modern revivals, and of course, Tom Hiddleston.

From the moment the lights rise at the beginning until that last strangling, gut wrenching ending, there is simply too much happening for me to go into a full plot synopsis, so here is what it says in the playbill, “When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus.  But when famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of the realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.” 

This production was directed by Josie Rourke, the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse where the play was performed.  You may know of her work in 2011 as the director of the much acclaimed Much Ado About Nothing staring Catherine Tate and David Tenant.  The gritty, raw approach that Rourke used not only applied a roughness, or possibly realness to it, but also leant it a certain connection.  It resonated.  Like a too-cold drink gone down just wrong so that you feel it for an hour in your chest, seeping cold fingers of emotion into your being.  All of this was only heightened by the design, done by Lucy Osborne, which combined a feeling of Old Rome, and war-torn Britain. 

To be honest, I don’t really know what I was expecting, but that certainly wasn’t it.  It was a bare stage, minimalist production with the actors seated in neutral position at the back of a thrust stage.  The set consisted of a collection of chairs and lines hand painted by the actors during the production on the floor to create a room and a plinth.  A single ladder rose from up right to the heavens.  The backdrop was painted brick with iron ladders half scaling the walls and semi-roman graffiti decorating it, declaring "Annis Plebeian".  It was visually astounding. 

The play itself can naturally be divided into two parts, pre and post interval, or as I think of them: Part one: in which a whole shit fuck ton happens, and Tom Hiddleston does weird things with his legs and makes awkward noises while in a random and possibly unnecessary shower.  And Part two: in which very little happens but that very little breaks you heart to the very fiber of your being, thus making you cry like a little baby whilst simultaneously experiencing a very confused lady-shame boner because Hiddleston has appeared wearing what can only be described as borderline obscene trousers, so the things that are happening are hard to understand because… because… no there is actually no direction he can turn in which my eyes aren’t glued to his… *ahem* actor.  Or blood pack, I'm pretty sure it was actually just a blood pack.  I hope it was a blood pack… I'm going to pretend it was a blood pack (it was definitely NOT just a blood pack.  Oh thank god, he’s turned away- no… no this direction is worse).

Anyway, back to the review of the actual show, and by show I mean performance, not the peepshow being seen from seats E11 and E12. 

During the fight scene, rubble fell from the “sky,” and the chairs acted as wall and horseback for the soldiers.  Hiddleston scaled that giant ladder in what can only be described as a somewhat bizarre and frightening interpretation of a spider- this being one of the weird things he was doing with his legs- and returned covered in blood.  And I mean, covered.  It was slightly gratuitous, though that admittedly was probably necessary.  It was quite frightening to behold, in fact.  He seemed to acquire new injuries each time he left the stage, though did an excellent job of making me sincerely worried for his well-being. 

Of course, then he gets a chance to wash the blood from him, via a stream of water that descends from the heavens (they were very fruitful heavens, they variously rained rubble, water, and rose petals).  I was quite pleased at first, because he was really covered in blood.  He pulled that shirt off and, goodness good gracious.  I'm not just referring to the actor named by MTV to be “the sexiest man alive” but the incredible makeup work done to make that sexiest man alive look to be on the verge of death.  And then he showered and the entire theatre began making noises of extreme discomfort.

I’ll admit: this is my one big grief with this show.  That shower scene was not really necessary; he could easy have left the stage and removed the blood off stage without making everyone incredibly uncomfortable.  I also can’t explain what was really uncomfortable about it, other than the analogy of the noises he made sounding a bit like someone having a quite aggressive… moment of self-gratification.  Tom Hiddleston, the man who makes you cry little a wee little baby when a tear falls down his cheek, maybe could work on making pain not sound quite so… sexual.  I’d like to think that it was just me, but my friend was hiding her face on one side of me, and the woman seated on my other side asked her husband, “exactly how long will this last?” only moments before the dear actor dog shook his head sending streams of bloody water everywhere and exited the stage. 

Okay, grief over, we can go on to discuss the rest of the amazing play. 

Because after that, we are introduced to the mother-son relationship between Coriolanus and Volumnia, played by the amazing Deborah Findlay who managed to play her as simultaneously loving, proud, obsessive, and touched.  We also see the natural chemistry that exists between Coriolanus and Virgilia, played by Birgitte Hjort Sørensen.  When those two greet each other upon their reunion, sparks flew and I wished, foolishly, romantically, that someone might someday look at me the way that they looked at each other.  Until I remembered that they were acting. 

And then there are the odious Sicinia and Brutus, the conniving tribunes who conspire to oppose Coriolanus as Consul and have him exiled from the city.  Sicinia, played by Helen Schlesinger, and Brutus played by Elliot Levey, win the award for best slime balls I’ve seen in awhile, as I hated them within thirty seconds of their introduction.  Chaos ensues their every move, leading to the eventual condemnation of Coriolanus.  Volumnia argues with her son about what he should do next which ends with a very whipped looking Coriolanus backing away from his mother (who, for the record, is a decent foot shorter than him), and promising to do her will in one of few truly comedic moments within the play.  A sad goodbye and we are onto the final moment pre-interval in which Tom Hiddleston stands upon a plinth- which is actually a box drawn on the stage in black paint- while being plastered with tomatoes from the Plebeians and looks like he is actually about to eat someone’s soul. 

Gut wrenching part two, in which I cried like a baby and Tom Hiddleston wore weirdly high trousers that highlighted everything beneath them a bit too well, was what brought it all together.  The convoluted pre-interval information sesh is over, leaving nothing but raw emotion and straightforward action.  Mark Gatiss broke my heart as Menenius being turned away from Coriolanus, Tom Hiddleston did his patent pretty crying (that man can cry so beautifully), and Deborah Findlay brought Volumnia to life as a mother imploring her son’s very being to stop this madness.  And how can he turn her down? As he is weeping down-left, the audience is dying, his wife is up-right sobbing, their son is bowed on the ground before them and those cold fingers of emotion I mentioned earlier are clutched around your heart, digging their nails into that part of you that is trying not to sob in the middle of a theatre.

He explains in as many words that though she has won a victory for Rome, she has condemned him to death, and in that moment your heart actually stops.  The elation of a moment ago, when he turned and accepted them into his arms, when he kissed his wife and held his son, has vanished to be replaced by that sudden gut wrenching fear and heartrending realization of what is to come.  They say their goodbyes for the second time and the sobs you were keeping down a moment ago are struggling to get out.

And then you blink, blink, and he’s being hoisted in the air by his ankles, a somewhat graphic death ensues in which more gratuitous blood douses the stage, hopefully from the blood packet that was hiding in those trousers, and it ends.  And you’re sitting there, stunned, shocked, because although you knew it was coming, it somehow still came out of left field.  Not to mention that lady-shame boner is happening again because dear lord the view from the back… those trousers ought to be against the rules.  While leaving the theatre with my friend, a sixty some-odd woman behind me announced for all to hear that “he looks just as good upside down as rightside up," showing that it isn't just the younger folks who appreciate a bit of Hiddleston booty. 

I'm sitting here now, two hours after the play finished, and still can’t get my thoughts in order on it.  It was astoundingly amazing, I am in awe, not just at the trousers, but at the sheer astonishing beauty that was everything in that play, even the awkward shower moment.  I even liked the plot and story.  It's interesting to discover that, when done with the right cast, the right direction, and the right concept, I can appreciate a play that I've never before been able to get through more than a few pages of. So I guess what I'm really saying here is that the cast, the crew, everyone involved, should be proud.  You wowed this theatergoer.