Shakespeare wins Hands
down
I beseech the Royal Shakespeare Company, when next
its representatives kindly hand me a copy of the programme at Stratford, to
stick the pages unopenably together with some powerful adhesive; I really do
not think my temper will stand any more of the factitious twaddle which they
regularly assemble in it to point some idiotic moral. For their new production
of Coriolanus, for instance, the sections are labelled "Man and State,"
"Mothers and Sons" and "Killing and Dying"; few of the quotations under these
headings have anything to do with Shakespeare, and none has any discernible
connection with the performance.
Nor could they have; for the production by Terry
Hands is as untendentious as it is magnificent; this is the strongest, clearest
and most consistent Shakespeare I have seen anywhere for years. It is cast with
immense care, right down to the alsos (Arthur Whybrow makes a considerable mark
among the uncanonically sub-divided soloists in the crowd of Roman citizens);
it is nobly set and costumed by Farrah, with no scenery other than rearing
black walls, and rich clothes almost entirely in monochrome. (Until Coriolanus
in the last Act enters in blood-red, the only colour anywhere is the blazing
hair of Fleur Chandler as Virgilia); and Coriolanus is what Shakespeare made
him, which is the hero of the play.
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A flawed hero, to be sure; that, after all, is
a definition of the tragic protagonist. But the icy splendour of this hero's
hot contempt for the mob is not to be denied its place at the heart of the play
and of the spectator's sympathy, and when Menenius (played by Graham Crowden
with an ironic grandeur that almost walked off with the entire production) says
"Rome and her rats are at the point of battle" we are allowed to see Coriolanus
through Shakespeare's eyes, rather than those of Chairman Mao.
Though the staging nowhere falls short in
imagination, it is free from stunts and tricks. The stylised melee and the
realistic hand-to-hand encounter work equally well, neither invalidating the
other, and the shooting-stick with which Menenius is equipped (though I am not
quite certain whether this was the idea of the director or of Mr Crowden's
osteopath) seems not at all out of place, any more than the overturning of the
judgment-table by the condemned Coriolanus, a gesture as fitting as it is
dramatic. And with the beserk frenzy of the final lynching, Mr Hands thrusts
home remorselessly the point of a play which was, among other things,
Shakespeare's farewell to tragedy. |
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Alan Howard is a natural Coriolanus, and he strikes
the right note of sandunga from the first to last. But his voice is
getting perilously mannered; that back-of-the-throat gurgle is now tiresome,
and he out-Scofields Scofield in the narrowness of his vocal range - so much so
that the ear quivers in relief and pleasure when he adopts a falsetto to jeer
at the rabble.
That may seem ungenerous, and will seem even more so
to those who see the production; but I only go into such critical particular
because Mr Howard is in general so good. He has nobility, unwavering
self-assurance and an effortlessly dignified bearing, and he sttrikes true
Shakespearean fire repeatedly, from "They have a leader" to "You common cry of
curs."
Maxine Audley is an excellent Volumnia, warm and
regal at the same time; Julian Glover as Aufidius is good enough to make his
final treachery unbearably painful; Tim Wylton's Sicinius provides exactly the
right weight for the play's balance. This production is handsome in every sense
of the word, and I shall certainly return to it. When I do, I hope the
air-conditioning will have ceased to reduce the temperature in the auditorium
to its present level just below Absolute Zero; I lost my left ear and three
toes from frostbite.
Bernard Levin
Sunday Times, 23.10.77