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Coriolanus
Oct. 8th, 2017 02:28 pmCoriolanus is another of Shakespeare's plays which is rarely performed, and which I hadn't seen, so I booked tickets for the RSC when they included it in their Rome season. SM enjoyed it, and was very taken with all the mental struggles going on, I was rather less impressed.
As we often do, we went to the Shakespeare Unwrapped session in the morning. For once this was disappointing. The session was taken by the assistant director and the understudies for Coriolanus and Volumnia (Coriolanus' mother). It was interesting to a point, seeing some of the rehearsal process, but at no point were the audience specifically engaged, and unusually there were no questions. Maybe the wrong actors/director had been chosen to lead this, because it was very much a demonstration.
As for the play - I didn't feel I connected with any of the characters. I don't need to like a character - some characters really make an impact however dubious they are - but apart from Coriolanus, who merely proved good military leaders generally make bad political leaders, there was nothing which spoke to me. I might have gone for Aufidius, but we didn't see enough of him for me to decide. And I missed the apparent homoerotic relationship between him and Coriolanus.
From the morning session I gathered the play left many questions as to what was right or wrong. Maybe in trying to keep the ambiguity it lost any dynamism it might have had (or maybe it's not a great play). When the cast came out for the curtain call at the end everyone was wearing grey, which rather summed up my impression of the play.
As we often do, we went to the Shakespeare Unwrapped session in the morning. For once this was disappointing. The session was taken by the assistant director and the understudies for Coriolanus and Volumnia (Coriolanus' mother). It was interesting to a point, seeing some of the rehearsal process, but at no point were the audience specifically engaged, and unusually there were no questions. Maybe the wrong actors/director had been chosen to lead this, because it was very much a demonstration.
As for the play - I didn't feel I connected with any of the characters. I don't need to like a character - some characters really make an impact however dubious they are - but apart from Coriolanus, who merely proved good military leaders generally make bad political leaders, there was nothing which spoke to me. I might have gone for Aufidius, but we didn't see enough of him for me to decide. And I missed the apparent homoerotic relationship between him and Coriolanus.
From the morning session I gathered the play left many questions as to what was right or wrong. Maybe in trying to keep the ambiguity it lost any dynamism it might have had (or maybe it's not a great play). When the cast came out for the curtain call at the end everyone was wearing grey, which rather summed up my impression of the play.
