Abstract
While ‘a plague on both your houses’ is a line from another Shakespeare play, profound disillusionment with the partisans of the contemporary American political scene clearly informs the Actors’ Shakespeare Project's (ASP) new ‘modern verse translation’ (by Sean San José) of Coriolanus. Given Shakespeare's jaundiced view of each set of characters – senators, plebes, and consuls alike – updating the text for a modern audience's jaded political sensibilities seems finally unnecessary, and José's version indeed winds up incorporating much of the original text. Menenius’ (Donna Sorbello) first monologue, the famous ‘belly fable’, retains the speech's essence, occasionally interspersed with ahistorical ad-libs (a common feature of many contemporary productions); the overall effect of José's text is somewhat like listening to a Shakespeare play interrupted by the translations of an editorial gloss. Surely judicious cuts to the long and dense play is the simpler approach? Volumnia's affect in scenes where she attempts to persuade her son to be more politic in his handling of the plebes is perhaps the most altered by José's interpretation: Jennie Israel in the role delivers chastisement to her son in 3.3 with the flatly dismissive, pragmatic air of someone accustomed to dealing with intractable toddlers: ‘do what you will’ (in the original text, ‘do your will’ [137]).
Like the fragmented Roman body politic, partially effaced friezes decorate the set as if Rome is in the throes of decay rather than its nascence, with mosaic tile design projected onto the floor (scenic design by Cristina Todesco). At the play's start, khaki-fatigued and army-booted plebes ringing the theatre's aisles stamp the floors ominously in unison, calling for Caius Martius’ death and more provisions of corn (costume design by Emily Woods Hogue). This human percussion recurs at 3.3's climax when Coriolanus (Genevieve Simon) petulantly ‘banishes you’ (127), the assembled company, in reprisal for his own banishment; his imminent departure for ‘a world elsewhere’ (139) is nearly drowned out by their forceful stamping. There are no sacred cows in Shakespeare's Coriolanus and in ASP's production, Rome's political classes quickly reveal their shortcomings, ranging from the Machiavellian manoeuvering of the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius (Shanelle Chloe Villegas and Ahtziri Ulloa); the shallow, callow plebes (the company, doubling many roles); and the wan, well-meaning but finally ineffective patrician enablers of Coriolanus, which include Menenius (here conflated with Cominius’ role), who discovers his embassy to Antium is rejected out of hand for Coriolanus’ new allegiance to Aufidius (Patrice Jean-Baptiste). As news of Coriolanus’ alliance with the Volscians materialises as an existential threat to Rome, the tribunes get their comeuppance in the play's de casibus structure, moving quickly from musing at the scene's start, ‘We hear not of him, neither need we fear him’ (4.6.1), to ‘don’t blame us’, they say in unison (in the original text, ‘Say not we brought it’, 126), as the fickle citizens backpedal hastily on their role in Coriolanus’ banishment, ‘against our will’ (153–4).
From the outset, Coriolanus himself minces no words in his sneering, spitting contempt for the citizen classes. Simon works up into a froth of choler and bile in each scene, manipulated by every new provocation from the canny tribunes: his thin, stage-managed attempt at an apology ‘prompted’ by the patricians and Volumnia (Menenius tries to adjust Coriolanus’ ‘outfit’) is easily thwarted by the tribunes – we can almost see Simon snap back into instant hostility upon being called a ‘traitor’ (3.3.68). With a Centurion-like mohawk haircut, knitted grey padded epaulets and armour, and a white vest, Simon readily rolls her eyes and relishes Coriolanus’ outbursts; if anger is the more stately and restrained Volumnia's meat, then her son supped the lion's portion. So far upstage as to be nearly invisible, a cringing Caius Martius listens to Cominius’ praise of his valour at Corioles and washes blood off his face into a basin in 1.10. Once given his honourific ‘Coriolanus’, he cannot bring himself to wear his shirt of humility – his heart on his sleeve – or to display his wounds to gain the plebes’ support for his consulship in 2.3. While Cominius casts the candidate's slated performance as political necessity borne out of tradition, José's adaptation emphasises Coriolanus’ disdain for theatrical spectacle, but Simon stops short of suggesting a deeply principled view underpins his character's apparent scorn; before they urge the malleable plebes to withdraw their initial votes for Coriolanus, at this juncture Brutus and Sicinius reasonably see support for the incorrigibly hostile Coriolanus as antithetical to the interests of the non-patrician classes. When Simon asks for the plebes’ voices and then eagerly polls the audience for votes, it is telling that not everyone makes the ‘thumbs up’ gesture.
Only Aufidius reduces Coriolanus to wistfulness, first in 3.1 when Cominius reports the Volsces are regrouping and, once in Antium, Coriolanus is visibly charmed by his job interview with his erstwhile foe in 4.5, blushing giddily like a star-struck fan. The ASP production's all-female cast replaces Shakespeare's original cast of male actors in this highly homoerotically charged scene, but like many productions in the recent trend of all-female casts ushered in by the Donmar's 2016 ‘Shakespeare Trilogy’, there is no discernible message attached to the cast's change of gender identity: Aufidius and Coriolanus’ male homoeroticism is simply played by female actors, literalised ‘wedded mistresses’ (116).
More reserved and canny a politician, Aufidius quickly realises that Volumnia's visit to Antium to plead Rome's cause returns Coriolanus to an earlier stage of childhood development, ‘Wouldn’t you heed your mother?’ (in the original text, ‘I was moved withal’ [5.3.194]), and Aufidius plots now to ‘renew him[self] in [Coriolanus’] fall’ (5.5.48). Hearing Coriolanus’ attempt to broker peace, Aufidius taunts him with the tribunes’ label that Coriolanus cannot brook, ‘traitor,’ and ‘boy’ (5.6.85, 104), rousing him to a predictably explosive response. Stabbed by a mob of vengeful Volscians and Aufidius, Coriolanus, who has seen his achievements as purely sui generis, ‘Alone [he] did’ all (117), reaches a fitting end that underscores no man is an island in a sea of unrelenting treachery.