Coriolanus

Play (1605-1608)
by William Shakespeare

And the CSC Apprentice Company: Halley Bahrach, Ellen Bryan, Steven Cosnek, Ashley Croce, Andrew Dahreddine, Lily Drexler, Ned Fitzgerald, Joseph Paul Frangieh, Christopher Gaskell, Michelle Geisler, Luke Hofmaier, Alyce Householter, Elise Hudson, Adraina Jones, Christopher O’Reilly, Anneke Reich, Katie Travers, Nick Wakely, Alexander Walker, Gigi Watson

The scene is roughly the fifth century BCE in Rome, and war is raging. Caius Martius, given the honorary name Coriolanus after a major conquest of the Volscian city of Corioles, is a powerful military commander, but, due to his rough edges, not as popular as he might be. In the interest of his political success, his mother, Volumnia, a political stage mother par excellence, coaches him to present himself to the public as they wish him to be even though it strains his conscience. He complies, and numerous complications develop. Allegiances realign and the result is complicated and tragic.

Driven to Personal, Military and Political Distraction by Mom might have been the epigram of this play.

This production on Boston Common is boisterous, loud and unrelenting from the outset. However, I enjoyed it and found it engaging, though was quite tuckered out by the constant level of the volume and warlike hysteria.

The production is set in contemporary dress. Warriors carry machine guns and there are strong suggestions – through the constant level of bombast – of the sorts of rebellions now going on in the Middle East.

This play, about a successful military leader gone politically wayward under parental influence, associates easily with contemporary personalities – on all sides – related to conflict in that region.

In the lead, Nicholas Carriere is a tragic and constantly fraught Coriolanus, suggesting more an unconscious vulnerability to manipulation by his mother, Volumnia, than by a tragic awareness of the consquences of his choices.

Fred Sullivan Jr. as Menenius is a standout for his subtle rendering of character and speech. In the midst of the maelstrom onstage, he gives welcome modulation to his role as an astute political operative.

Karen Macdonald, a long-time former member of the company at the American Repertory Theatre, gives a forceful and convincingly overpowering reading of Volumnia. In her interpretation, Volumnia bludgeons Coriolanus psychologically rather than manipulating him with insinuation – a reasonable choice, but perhaps with not with quite as dastardly effect as it conceivably might have.

In the Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of Coriolanus in 2009 at the Somerville Armory, Bobbie Steinbach offered a more insinuating Volumnia who rendered Benjamin Evett’s Coriolanus helpless with a series of carefully placed emotional judo moves that left him tragically vacant.

For fans of HBO’s The Wire (2002-2008), compare, in season four of that series, the dastardly interpretation of motherhood offered by Namond Brice’s (Julito McCullum) mother, De’Londa (Sandi McCree), who taunts him mercilessly for not taking on the family drug-dealing mantle set by his father. As well, for The Wire fans, consider Brianna Barksdale’s (Michael Hyatt) similar treatment of her son D’Angelo (Larry Gilliard, Jr.) in seasons one and two.

Or, for fans of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), consider Livia Soprano’s (Nancy Marchand) treatment of her son Tony (James Gandolfini), equally brutal and manipulative.

In her masterful rendition of female roles in Shakespeare, Women of Will, Tina Packer offers a very useful context for understanding Shakespeare’s evolving depiction of women’s empowerment. Through that lens, Volumnia is seen not simply as a horrible mother, but as an ambitious woman rising up to confront powerful men on their own terms. It is not a wise realization of power – other of Shakespeare’s women do better on that score – but it is understandable in what Packer sees as Shakespeare’s evolving attempt to frame something important about strong women’s attempts to realize themselves within given social constraints.

In that view, the unrest framed in this current production takes on a new tragic dimension when that attempt to realize power conflicts with filial expectations, and the desired oases are turned into sites of sorrowful underminings.

– BADMan