POLITICAL ECHOES, CLASS ARROGANCE, THRILLS
The award for ExIt of the Year goes to the magnificent David Oyelowo, tearing up the central aisle of the Olivier in a fury as the first half closes, with the timelessly furious shout of the unappreciated : “Thus I turn my back – there is a world elsewhere!” .
If I had a problem with this vigorous, elegantly staged production it is being drawn irrationally to the hothead warrior’s side from the start. For all the clarity and dramatic arc of his arrogance and fall, I risked turning into his Mum Volumnia myself, albeit without the mad raving about how lovely his wounds are. After swaggering on in a plum velvet suit, disdaining the plebeian rioters, our hero hopped into uniform for some spectacularly athletic savagery in battle against the Volscii leader (“A lion I am proud to hunt”) , achieving wounds all over, about which everyone concerned talks a great deal.
Then he got nagged by his pushy mother (Pamela Nomvete, splendid) into becoming a Consul. Politics and public affairs are not his thing at all, grubby business compared to banging Volscii on the head with shields, but the terrifying Volumnia wants her man-child to be king of the world. He goes through the ceremony of presenting himself humbly to the proles, with “a humble spirit, a beggar’s tongue” but hates it, still doesn’t think much of them because he has no wish to be their ‘harlot”and they know it. He’s the ultimate anti-populist, refreshing in a strange way at this time of creepy populism : “You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate as reek o’ the rotten fens- whose loves I prize as the dead carcasses of unburied men!”. Calling your electorate smelly didn’t work even in Rome, so the Tribunes of the people (especially Stephanie Street’s Sicinius, a real angry-leftie-lady with an unforgiving bob) point out his “soaring insolence” . He just snarls that he did it all for them, ungrateful sods – “For your voices I have fought!” .
Through all this, the energy of Oyelowo’s magnificent physical expressiveness mesmerized me, so that for all the speeches (huge projections) and rackety riots, I only wanted to watch him rather than the democratic plotters. And that’s despite his unsettlingly modern insistence on the validity of “mine own truth” and his conviction “I will be loved when I am lack’d”. Very Prince-Harry.
The political speeches are sharply done and fine, especially by Menenius (Peter Forbes) eloquently making the case that, like bits of a human body, in a nation you’re all in it together, well-fed belly and skinny extremities alike. Altogether, it’s a great booking for a party conference season after a big election. But all the way, it’s Oyelowo who draws the eye and ear: that spectacular high-speed run defectiing to the Volscii did actuallyu raise a cheer at the preview I saw.
It’s grippingly presented: no togas in Lyndsey Turner’s production, just Es Devlin filling the Olivier stage with Roman sculptures at the start , so it looks like a special exhibition at the Barbican because it lies among immense descending square concrete pillars. The period is nicely unfixed, with both loud bangs and flashes in battle but plenty of swords and shields to keep the savagery of ancient Rome respected. All the cast have immense energy, Nomvete is a tremendous presence and Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Coriolanus’ ever-anxious wife is, in her brief scnes, properly touching.
nationaltheatre.org.uk to 9 November
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