BWW Reviews: CORIOLANUS At Harrisburg Shakespeare Company

CORIOLANUS is a tricky piece of goods. Shakespeare's play is based on a piece of anecdotal history - there was for centuries, including during Shakespeare's time, presumed to have been a historical Roman warrior, Caius Marcius Corolanus, a hero of the siege of Corioli, a Volscian town. His history is found in Livy's, Plutarch's, and other ancient writers' works, believed then to be factual accounting. Shakespeare's tragedy revolves around his supposed history of military greatness and political failure. He's a tough character to crack, not given to helpful soliloquies in the way of Lear, Macbeth, or Hamlet. It's hard to determine at times if the character in Shakespeare's play is excessively proud and calling for hubris to lay him low, or if he's a purely noble man - as opposed to nobleman - laid low by his beliefs against democracy. (That latter point has caused CORIOLANUS to be the only Shakespearian play to be banned in a modern democracy - pre-war France suppressed the play because of its popularity among fascists.)

On stage now at Gamut Theatre, as Harrisburg Shakespeare Company, the play is rendered in a slightly more modern twist by placing it in the United States - still called Rome, and its enemy still the Volscians - on the frontier at the time of the Indian Wars. Coriolanus is a play that is well suited to adaptation to place and period, though the contemporary setting of the 2011 movie is perhaps strikingly-enough rendered that many familiar with it may have more trouble shaking their minds out of the modern war-zone depictions from that than they do at moving the mental image out of ancient Rome.

And therein lies one of the rubs of this production - when you transplant a Shakespearian play, consider your ramifications as you map out your intent. The Romans become Southern and Western frontier Americans, the Volscians Native Americans. The Volscians were not seen as all that different from the Romans; they were the next city-state up the road. They often were, in fact, not enemies. Augustus Caesar himself was raised and possibly born in Volscian territory, and Cicero was a native of Arpinium. Those who settled the frontier, on the other hand, often treated the Native Americans around them not as neighbors much like themselves but in a less happy light. As, alas, does this production.

The Volscians, portrayed as what can only be understood as Native Americans, are prone to spending their time bare-chested and covered in tribal markings (which veer between Native American and Celtic, apparently) and war paint, their leader, Tullus Aufidius (Ian Potter) given to wandering about, shirtless, in a hollow-bone and leather breastplate, while they all salute by hitting their chests and giving enthusiastic though questionably literate grunts - these are stereotyped cowboys-and-Indians members of the First Nation, not the civilized people that they in fact were. The effect is bewildering, and distracts from the play itself.

The other rub is that CORIOLANUS is not TITUS ANDRONICUS. There is war in this play, yet war is not the point; however, in both the promotion and the performance of the show, there has been an emphasis on the blood of battle. But battle is not Coriolanus' theme, nor its point. Coriolanus is about a man who, in terms of the "Peter Principle," rises to his level of incompetence - a great battle hero and leader, beloved by his men, he is not popular with the people, has no idea of how to deal with civilians, and is rejected as consul. The story can be viewed as one of Caius Marcius' hubris, as well as, or just as a political fable warning us that military leaders should not always be selected as civilian leaders (history has seen that in plenty across the globe). But while it can be bloody, it is the morality play that is the point. The text given us presents it, yes, but the staging does not. It is Coriolanus alone who is responsible for his own downfall - partly because his opinions rankle, partly because he is too honest to lie about his lack of trust in the people's judgment. He is a soldier, not a politician, pushed into becoming what he is not.

That said, the acting in this production should not be overlooked - some of the performances are excellent. Tom Weaver, previously seen as the young Asher Lev on the Gamut stage, is here the older, wearier Caius Marcius, and the aches and pains of the scars he does not bare for public admiration by the Roman plebeians can be felt by the audience. Ian Potter's Aufidius is well-rendered, especially as a leader apparently taken in by the importunings of a defecting enemy, who secretly doesn't trust his new follower for one moment. Tara Herweg's Volumnia is splendid, and Volumnia is a tremendously complex character, possibly the most interesting one in the play. The military and political equivalent of a rabid stage mother, it is she who really controls her son's life, even during his marriage, and thus, indirectly, the fortunes of Rome.

There is no doubt that CORIOLANUS is insufficiently produced. Though T.S. Eliot may not have been entirely correct in declaring it superior to HAMLET, it is, in production as opposed to reading, a highly accessible story of the rise and fall of a great leader. For that alone, it is worth seeing if you have never had the opportunity to see it live. The lead performances, as well, are worth it. And director Clark Nicholson has given the play reasonable pacing that makes three hours feel like considerably less. But the characterization of the Volscians is disturbing as presented, not because Native Americans are not a fitting comparison to the Volscians - that is a legitimate subject for debate - but because they feel here too much like the caricature of tribes of the First Nation that was so incorrectly portrayed in American media for far too long. In that regard, approach this basically intelligent production with care.

Through November 24 at Gamut Theatre, Strawberry Square, Harrisburg. For tickets, call 717-238-4111 or visit www.gamutplays.org.

Photo credit: Philip Mann (note: the photograph is of a rehearsal and not the final staging of the Volscians during the production)

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