Coriolanus Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

dissappointing

This is an uninspiring production of one of Shakespeare’s less accessible plays. It keeps relatively close to the text until the second half, at which point scenes begin to be swapped about, cut and pasted beyond recognition and generally mauled. As a result, a great deal of the dramatic irony of the original is lost, making an already dense play flat and undramatic. The performances are good, though undistinguished, and the lack of an actor of real stature to carry many of the big, text-heavy scenes is felt throughout. Added to this, the effort of suspending one’s disbelief is not helped by the production itself. Alan Howard is altogether too weedy to be a credible Coriolanus, antiquity’s answer to the Terminator. The endless drama school annunciation makes the dialogue monotonous and the surfeit of histrionic emotion leaves one cold and makes it hard to care much for the characters. This is definitely one of the weaker productions in this BBC series, though given how notoriously difficult a play Coriolanus is, that is somewhat to be expected.