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Sunday, March 31, 2013

Coriolanus @ STC

This year Shakespeare Theatre Company made the interesting choice to pair two military plays simultaneously --- Coriolanus and Wallenstein (Friedrich Schiller). My season tickets are so that I saw Coriolanus now and Wallenstein in a couple of weeks. Some of the casts overlap, which must be difficult.

I like this production of Coriolanus significantly less than the movie version released last year, primarily because Patrick Page's performance did not work as well as Ralph Fiennes in the movie. (I have learned not to automatically favor the Brits in any Shakespearean production, but in this case the Brit is better.) Coriolanus is hard to play --- not a character to easily inspire sympathy, perhaps even more unlikable to female and/or American audience.

The play makes me wonder whether Shakespeare favored democracy. Of course democracy is not a modern phenomenon, but in Shakespeare's time it was hardly the absolute ideal it is regarded today. He made "the people" and their "liberty" seem so stupid and frivolous that today's audience is bound to be disturbed. I wonder whether Coriolanus appeared more heroic and less troubling to audience living in monarchy.

It's about 1) machismo (not in the way Greek mythology does it but in an ironic way), 2) democracy and politics, and 3) family.

Ah, family. Shakespeare is always about family, about parent-child relationships. Is there one relationship in his plays that even approaches the ideal father like Ned Stark? I can't name one. Not that I know of. Each of Willie's parent-child relationship is pain and suffering, so real and so common. Volumnia and Casius Matius are a more typical study of the Oedipus complex than Hamlet.

Even early in Act 1, Shakespeare has a character observe "[He] did it for his mother." A similar point was repeated at the end. If I were the director, I would have Coriolanus deliver the climactic passage "O mother, mother!" in a whisper, with a sob and a sigh, instead of hysterical crying out in both productions. I think it should be done with a kind of resignation and exhaustion, after a lifetime of making sacrifices to Volumnia's wishes. Whom do you think his scars are for?

4 comments:

simon said...

So the movie is good? I haven't watched it.

"Angels in America" was pretty fascinating. I watched the whole series in almost one sitting. The angels were hilarious...

Little Meatball said...

The movie is pretty good, especially Fiennes. Jessica Chastain played his wife.

CAVA said...

最初的戏剧还就是反映社会人的原始情感罢,这两处应该算是比较冷门的剧目,也不能脱离这个准则。

Little Meatball said...

都是人的原始情感,社会的进步并未消灭掉,即使现在也遍地都是,难怪 psychoanalysis 喜欢拿莎剧做分析呢,剧情传奇但人物心理完全现实主义。

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