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Coriolanus (John Howard) is a soldier of obsessive integrity, overweening pride and intractability, impetuous action and stoicism. Thwarted, his rage knows no bounds. And his destructive rage drives the action of this play.
Gale Edwards's direction of Coriolanus is splendid: articulate, vigorous, boldly conceived and executed. She has assembled a company of distinction.
From minor players like Fiona Press and Carlton Lamb - certain, plain-speaking citizens and servants - to John Howard, a bestriding, unequivocal Coriolanus, every actor makes assured contribution to the production; and resounding good sense of the text.
This is an organic production: a fusion of creative elements. There's the disturbing and urgent music composed by Max Lambert and Martin Armiger; the dramatic lighting - from almost blinding intensity to secretive gloom - of Nigel Levings and there's Brian Thomson's set design.
Thomson's stage - vast and towering pillars, deep and yawning space - is slashed across the top by a movable, Perspex roof-piece. This imposing of the present on the past - Perspex on stone - is a powerful visual symbol of the timelessness and timeliness of the play's political themes - most important among them, the opposition between unity and the common good on the one hand, self interest and destructive self love on the other.
Like all Shakespeare's History plays, Coriolanus is much more concerned with the world of men than of women. But does Shakespeare ever invest more dramatic significance in the world of women than here? And, in Edwards's production, do any scenes make greater impact than the scenes in which Howard as Coriolanus is confronted by his inflexible and voracious mother (Dinah Shearing) and his wife (Heather Mitchell), who loves him with such painful and contained passion?
The two characters whose interaction with Coriolanus most reveal the nature of the play's political fabric are Rome's remorseless enemy, the Volscan general, Aufidius (Philip Quast) and Rome's senator - all affable, twinkling-eyed deviousness - Menenius (John Gaden). The impact of both these performers is rich and vital.
Edwards well understands the need for contrast, for periods of quiet and focused concentration after the flurry of battle. And the rhythms of this production are as much of tone and mood as of pace. This Coriolanus is political reality as Shakespeare conceived it and as we too often experience it; it's compelling theatre.
