Theatre as Warning: Red Bull Theater’s Coriolanus at the Barrow Street Theatre

The Red Bull Theater’s production of William Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Barrow Street Theatre is ensemble playing at its best, directed by Michael Sexton.  The small and tight-knit ensemble played early Romans and Volscians of all classes. 

About five centuries before Julius Caesar was stabbed in the Curia, the Roman patricians and warriors and plebeians had defeated their previous king, Tarquin the Proud, and established the Roman Republic.  This was not a republic in which all citizens were equal, but it was a start.  The play’s plebeians of the early republic become a character as a group with a common view.  When the play begins, the plebeians (lower class, working class, what you will) have “tribunes” to represent their interests in the patrician Senate.  Essentially the tribunes can be seen as go-betweens (like your local councilman, congressman, etc.), and can misinterpret or misrepresent (willfully or not) the plebeians to the patricians and vice versa. The plebeians want their fair share of grain (of which the patricians have more than they need).  The patricians don't want to give anything away.  This society is blatantly stratified. 

Caius Marcius is a fine soldier but a socially inept patrician.  Too soon after the Roman army has gotten rid of “Tarquin the Proud,” Caius Marcius behaves with much too much pride, setting himself up for a fall after rising as a military hero and gaining the surname Coriolanus after conquering the Volscian city of Corioli.  His politically ambitious friends and family want him to accept the Consulship of Rome (the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic).  I doubt it will surprise anyone that this does not turn out well 

The splendid cast elucidating the story and the people are:

Dion Johnstone is a powerful and articulate Coriolanus.  Strength and fury emanate from him except when he’s speaking to his mother, wife or son.  He is powerful, passionate, a bit dense, and very arrogant.

Virgilia, Coriolanus, and Volumnia in front, Cominius and Titus Lartius behind.  (Photo By Carol Rosegg)

Lisa Harrow was ruthless as Coriolanus’ mother Volumnia.  Her love for him displaced by her own ambition, Volumnia is not an easy character to like, but Harrow makes her three-dimensional.

Patrick Page was engaging but sleazy.  He is just a politician, but his heartbreak at Coriolanus’ rejection of him in the second half of the play is real.  His Menenius Agrippa was a Southern styled good-old boy.  While amusing, this choice seemed rather tired, even trite since everyone else in the play has city or homogeneous accents. Like the production, Mr. Page has political points to make.

Patrick Page as Menenius Agrippa (Photo by Carol Rosegg)

Matthew Amendt as Tullus Aufidius did not look like a tough warrior so he had to act it, and he did.  He spent a great deal of time off center, and I enjoyed watching him out of the corner of my eye as he responded — or didn’t — to Coriolanus.  His building fury is only broken by the death of the man he ordered killed, a man as like him as a brother.

 

The banished Coriolanus and Tullus Aufidius (Photo by Carol Rosegg)

Aaron Krohn played a strong Cominius, Coriolanus’ long-time friend and general. Krohn comes into his own as the sensible and sensitive friend to Coriolanus back in Rome.  Zachary Fine was Coriolanus’ fellow soldier and friend Titus Lartius. Both are also transformed to be part of the plebeians of Rome, slipping easily into other speech patterns and beliefs. Fine also plays a sodden member of the Volscian Aufidius’ staff and was charming and funny opening the production’s second half with great hilarity — this should be no surprise from the man who played Crab and Valentine in the Fiasco Theater Company production of Two Gentlemen of Verona at TFANA in 2015 [https://mollyismusing.blogspot.com/2015/05/2-shakespeares-and-upstart-crow.html]. 

 

Titus Lartius, Coriolanus, and Cominius (Photo by Carol Rosegg)

The plebeians are easily manipulated by the two tribunes who are supposed to represent the plebeians but who have agendas of their own.  These two are well played by Stephen Spinella (Sicinius Velutus) and Merritt Janson (Junius Brutus). Sicinius makes me very angry, but Spinella is so good and was honestly physically afraid of Johnstone’s Coriolanus that my anger with him faded, if just for the moment.

Rebecca S’Manga Frank played multiple roles, from Coriolanus’ wife Virgilia who she completely differentiated from angry Roman plebeians calling for Coriolanus’ banishment.

Olivia Reis played Coriolanus’ small son.  Her face was a child’s face until she reappeared as a courtesan in the Volscian camp or a Roman plebeian, when she became an entirely different physical person. 

Edward O’Blenis did excellent work as First Citizen in Rome, an angry man, powerful and skilled at goading his fellow plebeians to revolt.  In the Volscian city of Corioli, he is the lieutenant to Tullus Aufidius. 

Christina Pumariega played a broad range of roles, each better than the last, from the Roman patrician Valeria to an acrimonious plebeian to a bawdy wench in the town of Corioli.

Coriolanus is the story of a man who was not temperamentally suited for public office.  He was a fine solider and general. He knew himself inappropriate to be Consul but allowed those with more ambition than he had push him to accept the honor.  What he may not have seen, since understanding people was not his strong point, was that each friend and relative who urged him on wanted to live in the reflection of a Consul’s power.  That was for themselves, not for him, not for Rome.  Inevitably his unfitness surfaced, his unfiltered mouth insulted every person he did not consider his peer, that is, most of mankind and particularly the plebeian class whose votes (“voice”) he needs to be named Consul.  The incensed plebeians accuse him of treason and want him either executed (by being thrown from the Tarpeian Rock) or banished.  Being banished from the country whose wars he’d fought is a bitter pill.  He goes over to the other side, to fight by the side of his arch enemy Tullus Aufidius, goes to war against Rome and denies his friends and family. 

The final act of murder/execution was harrowing to see and highly effective, played center stage as it was.  And, not surprisingly, the fool who ordered the death of Coriolanus regrets it and is heartbroken but it is too late to mend. 

Does any of this sound familiar?

I am not a purist in Shakespeare: I’m all for cutting, editing, even moving scenes around if it clarifies and moves the story along.  Shakespeare’s storytelling is strong enough to withstand a great deal of messing about.  This streamlined script, though, seemed a tightly strung bow, aimed predictably to show the power that can lie with two manipulative politicians directing the uneducated masses as a weapon against an enemy, not necessarily of the people, but of those two politicians.

I’ve seen the play before, and found it dreadfully appropriate that I saw this production on election night.  

~ Molly Matera, signing off to re-read Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, the novel, as opposed to the wonderful play version produced by Bedlam that I swooned over last week.

Cymbeline, or, Imogen and the False Reports: Summer in Central Park

Cymbeline is a late play by William Shakespeare, meaning he’d done with the histories, the straight comedies and romances, and was ready for riskier works to be produced indoors in more intimate venues than the Globe.  I decided, as I was ruminating on this production, that this play’s theme has to do with false reports and betrayal. May I assure you, no one onstage or in the audience noticed.

The play has its “problems,” but no one cares, for if it is approached from askew, hilarity ensues.  Daniel Sullivan’s production for The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park (that is, at the Delacorte in Central Park) fits the bill.

Director Sullivan did judicious cutting in his production and incorporated delightful doubling and imaginative additions.  The program lists 14 characters and assorted gentlemen, lords, ladies, soldiers, messengers and captains, all played by nine actors (seven men, two women).

Let’s consider the main character and her love:  Imogen and Posthumous Leonatus.  She the heiress to a kingdom in Wales, he an orphan raised by Imogen’s father, King Cymbeline, the two married in secret.  Also vying for Imogen’s love is Cloten, the cloddish son of the present Queen — who is not mother to any child of Cymbeline.  In comparison to Cloten, Posthumous is a catch. However, judged on his own, Posthumous is a cipher until he becomes an ass.

Lily Rabe as Imogen, Hamish Linklater as Posthumous.  Photo credit (c) 2015 Carol Rosegg.

Thanks to the bravura performance of a problematic role by Hamish Linklater, once in Rome we see the shallow, rudderless fool Posthumous is, and from being a cipher he becomes a fool then turns into an ass.  The utterly charming Mr. Linklater makes him almost pitiable, had he not attempted to pervert his good servant Pisanio (played to perfection by Steven Skybell) to kill his wife Imogen based upon false evidence (from Iachimo, more on him anon) and his own lack of faith.  Not to mention intelligence.

Once her father banishes her husband, Imogen’s only ally at court is Posthumous’ servant Pisanio.  Steven Skybell is punctiliously if oddly dressed, adores his master and his mistress, abhors the Queen and Cloten, and fears the King. 

The wonderful Lily Rabe is Imogen, feisty and foolish, faithful and fierce — she has a temper which delights us as she physically punishes Iachimo for his lascivious behavior in Cymbeline’s court…. In Wales or in Rome, Iachimo lies like a dog on a rug.  But the traditional servant, smarter than his “betters,” saves the day by judicious misleading and lying as any good servant must.   

Banished from Wales, Posthumous does not appear to be suffering overmuch. Among his playmates in Rome is Iachimo, a viscous Italian with money but no work, except perhaps as a nightclub warbler. Daniel Sullivan made a rather tedious scene of male braggadocio into a musical number using Raúl Esparza perfectly.  In a suit a little too shiny, with song stylings a little too slick, this Iachimo crooned like a cross between Sinatra and Dean Martin. He was sleazy, he was oily, he was brilliant. Then a woman dressed like a flapper in a slinky dress and short black wig joined him, and they danced sensuously together. One does not expect a show-stopping number a third of the way through a Shakespeare play, but we got one.

Imogen with Iachimo played by Raúl Esparza.  Photo credit (c) 2015 Carol Rosegg.

Meanwhile back in Wales, the other fool, the loutish Cloten (also played by the brilliant Linklater with a pageboy blond wig that brings to mind a series of dumb movies) attempts to crudely and tunelessly woo his stepsister, since both his mother the queen and his stepfather (clearly on drugs) want the two to marry.

Cymbeline, King of Britain, is a grumpy old pill-popping monarch played gruffly by Patrick Page, who also lends his voice to Posthumous’ patron in Rome, Philario.  Cymbeline’s second wife, the present unnamed Queen and mother of Cloten, is joyously played by Kate Burton, who has a marvelous time with the traditional wicked stepmother.  She also slips into a male identity (alas not a powerful performance), Morgan, who is actually Belarius, long banished from Cymbeline’s court due to false report. 

Hamish Linklater as Cloten, Imogen's stepbrother. Photo credit (c) 2015 Carol Rosegg.

Belarius and Posthumous, both loyal to Cymbeline, are both banished from court doubtless due to the machinations of the comic book evil, poison-dabbling queen, whose little white dog doesn’t even like her — it spends its entire stage time trying to wriggle out of her arms.  Happily the dog is rescued by Cornelius the court doctor played by Teagle F. Bougere, except when he’s playing the Roman ambassador, Lucius.  Or at the same time….

In Rome, there are two layabouts who look rather like the two sycophantic gentlemen in Cymbeline’s Court, and the same two actors are those mountain folk whom Imogen-disguised-as-a-boy falls in with, who are also her long lost brothers.  These multiple characters are snidely, brutishly, and sweetly, respectively, played by David Furr and Jacob Ming-Trent.

Back in Rome, Iachimo finagles a foolish promise from the annoyingly naïve Posthumous that causes all the ruckus with Imogen, which causes her to disguise herself as a boy escaping the court and traveling to Milford Haven.  Whereupon she chances to meet old Belarius, a.k.a. Morgan, and his two sons, who are not his sons at all, but Cymbeline’s missing heirs whom Belarius kidnapped twenty years before when he was wrongly banished from Cymbeline’s court.  And then she mistakes a headless dead guy for her husband.

Got that?

It’s that kind of play.

And I left out a whole lot of stuff.

Back and forth and round and about, the cast members are doubling roles and watching each other as if it’s a play within a play.  And the scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez suggests it is. David Zinn’s costume design and Charles G. Lapointe’s hair and wig design help bring it all together.

All the absurdities of the plot upon plot intertwined with a trope and a meme make light of the heartbreak of Imogen and Posthumous.  The actors do not.  There is funny work done by all, and some heartbreaking work as well.  This production of Cymbeline most certainly works; just don’t think too hard, it tangles the brain.

As tradition happily has it, all the confusing plots and sub-plots are tied up by evening’s end, and celebrated with an antic and acrobatic dance choreographed by Mimi Lieber, making for a wholly delightful evening in Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre with a fine company of players.

~ Molly Matera, apologizing for taking so long to write this – there is a bit more than a week to go in the run of this summer production, so get yourself to the virtual or actual line for Shakespeare in the Park!