Abstract
While attending Jonathan Cake’s performance as Coriolanus in New York City’s Central Park, I reflected on his performance of the same character at the Globe in July of 2006. I could not actually recall many specifics, but I do remember being impressed by his vigour, especially impressive given the then-record-breaking heat of that London summer. Thirteen years later, I remained impressed by Cake’s apparently undiminished energy, despite the passage of time, and the steadily rising global temperatures. Further, climate change was relevant as not only the actual, physical conditions of this performance, but also the conceptual framing of the production.
Director Daniel Sullivan set the play, according to the programme, in ‘a near-future, at the turn of the twenty-first century, marked out by the ravages of climate change’. Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design effectively manifested this post-apocalyptic vision. The walls of Rome were sheets of corrugated metal crudely welded together. The stage was littered with debris: empty plastic bottles, scorched tyres, and a car’s burned-out carcass. This was a world in which resources were scarce: precious water was kept in padlocked barrels.
Intriguingly, this was also a world in which there was little visual differentiation between the lowly citizens and their supposedly lofty leaders. Rather than put the patricians in better quality clothing, costume designer Kaye Voyce dressed everyone more or less equally ragged. When Menenius entered wearing dirty yellow trousers and a dishevelled tie-dyed shirt, he was visually indistinguishable from the mob in their bedraggled assortment of mismatched garments.
If there were any distinction between senator and citizens, it was in Teagle F. Bougere’s portrayal of Menenius’ relaxed, easygoing demeanour; in the half-swagger, half-slouch in his stroll; and especially in the ostentatious swigs he took from a hip flask. In this world, it seemed, accoutrements didn’t matter. Only access to the essentials influenced these characters’ comportment, as Menenius aptly illustrated. As the play progressed, and conditions worsened, Menenius’ slouch got lower, and though the swigs for a while got longer, eventually they disappeared altogether, along with the swagger. The benign, almost affectionate sarcasm with which Menenius first addressed the citizens soured until he sounded as bitterly spiteful as Caius Martius.
An actor cannot avoid making Caius Martius spiteful, but Cake rendered the man at least a little more sympathetic than merely an arrogant and abusive warrior. Cake did so primarily by portraying well the character’s affectionate treatment of his family – especially his son. In the first scene, for example, the boy darted out from behind a pile of rubble, jumping on his father’s back. Without missing a beat, elder Caius swooped the younger around the stage in a piggyback ride. At the same time, the man continued to berate the surrounding citizens for their cowardice and greed. As if his harsh words were not enough, he proceeded to unlock a barrel of water and pour out a cup for the boy, then dropped the ladle back in while pronouncing of the hungry and thirsty onlookers, ‘Hang ’em’ (1.1.199). Thus, even the expression of love for his son was inflected with the provocative display of derision he felt for the commoners. But it would have been easy to have staged this scene with just the derision – the added dimension created contrast, and a more complex portrait.
That complexity also showed in Caius’ devotion to his wife. On returning from war, Cake tenderly embraced Nneka Okafor’s Virgilia; and when banished, he hugged her hard and kissed her on her plainly pregnant belly. Yet his ensuing exit seemed strangely upbeat – there was almost a skip in his step on his way out. The sprightliness might have been overcompensation for his grief and anger, but it also reflected Cake’s consistent presentation of childlike (or childish?) over-eagerness for conflict. That attitude emerged first in Caius’ gleeful reaction to the news of Aufidius’ advance. Grinning widely, Caius jumped up and down with undisguised delight. Later, when asking if Aufidius had said anything about him – and if so, what – Coriolanus shuffled and murmured nervously like a shy adolescent inquiring about a crush. Here as throughout, the character came across as lacking a certain grounded maturity.
Most of all, this immaturity was evident in his interaction with his mother. As portrayed by Kate Burton, Volumnia unsurprisingly dominated interactions with her son. Burton invested Volumnia with a stereotypical masculinity, signalled in the way she swung her arms while walking, spread her legs while sitting, and barked her lines with complete command. As she berated Coriolanus for his failure to appease the plebeians, his shoulders tightened, and one drooped – a noticeable difference from his usually confident bearing. He tried to appease her, pleading ‘Look, I’m going’ (3.2.135), but her frustration continued unabated into the next scene, since Sullivan intriguingly staged the climactic confrontation of 3.3 with Volumnia present. She stood on the walls overlooking her son’s trial, and while she said nothing, and her face remained stony throughout, the growing tension was palpable in her ever-tightening posture, a change from her earlier, comfortable self-carriage. Her blistering glare at the Tribunes before exiting prompted one to suggest nervously: ‘Let a guard /Attend us through the city’ (3.3.144–5). This comic relief allowed the audience to laugh our way into intermission, but it in no way diminished the dramatic impact.
There was some superb work from the supporting cast, including Enid Graham and Jonathan Hadary, who found solid balance as the Tribunes. They seemed neither melodramatically villainous nor remotely sympathetic, but simply professional politicians, strategising to protect their own positions. Tom Nelis, too, made an impression as Cominius, especially in the intensity of his passionate defence of Coriolanus. On the Volscian side, Louis Cancelmi played Aufidius with a smooth and lyrical vocal tone. When he called Caius ‘bolder’ than the devil, ‘though not so subtle’ (1.10.17), he smiled at the comparison, suggesting that subtlety was the quality the Volscian preferred.
Coriolanus was, of course, not remotely subtle. Cake’s performance did not lack nuance, but the character showed not a shred of scheming guile – again, perhaps, evidence of childlike naivete, if not exactly innocence. We heard his distaste for political posturing in the exaggerated contempt he poured into the idea of pretence: ‘It is a part that I shall blush in acting’ (2.2.143–4), and in his apparently genuine shock at being called ‘traitor to the people’ (3.3.65). As he repeated the word ‘traitor’, it seemed as if he truly couldn’t believe that accusation. His ‘common cry of curs’ (3.3.119) speech was, surprisingly, not an explosion of self-righteous rage. Instead, it was a quiet, all but dumbfounded gasp of wounded incredulity, like a little boy who couldn’t understand why his actions had consequences.
Aufidius’ betrayal, using that same word, ‘traitor’, (5.6.85) prompted a similar reaction: open-mouthed disbelief. Cake’s protest of barely a whisper built gradually to a frenzied shriek, scrambling around the stage thrusting his half-scimitar, handle-first at the surrounding Volscians, daring them to attack. When finally they did, he stood passively, accepting his fate. But only when Aufidius himself struck did Coriolanus fall. As he shook gruesomely in his death throes, he reached for his sword, to die with weapon in hand. Aufidius calmly and deliberately put his foot on the struggling man’s back, denying his nemesis’ dying desire. The shaking subsided and ceased, and the crowd scattered slowly. The left the corpse alone onstage while the already hot stage lights glowed hotter, smoke crept out, and a metallic rumbling from beneath the stage closed the production.
These closing effects evoked escalating environmental disaster – a groaning and burning earth – mirroring the social tragedy. I confess, by the ending, I had become so caught up in the excellent staging of the story that I had half-forgotten the conceptual framing. If anything, I wish that compelling, unsettling idea had continued a bit more in the foreground. Still, the production as a whole, while thoroughly entertaining, also served as a grim depiction of the savage society that could result from unhalted climate change.