Coriolanus and the power of casting

#40days40books entry 15

Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's history plays. It follows the story of an ancient Roman called Caius Martius, who, legend told someone, took the city of Corioles single-handed after his soldiers ran away in cowardice. He was given a new name to commemorate his victory and invited to ascend to the position of consul. Instead of becoming consul, however, he was banished owing to a rather unpolitic personality. He ran off to join forces with his longtime nemesis and they set about pillaging the countryside on a direct course for Rome. Once he had got outside the walls of the city and was threatening to take it, his mother, wife and child appeared in supplication for their city and its inhabitants. Coriolanus relented, the attack was called off, and he was duly dispatched by hew new comrades as a traitor to the people he'd betrayed Rome by going to even though Rome had, in fact, just betrayed him by demanding that even though he was strong enough to die for the city he wasn't mild enough to rule it, but, really. Semantics, eh?

It's a later play and a very uneasy one. There are no real subplots. None of the supporting characters has a story of their own. The poetry is specific to each speaker and there are some gorgeous lines in this for anyone who takes the time to read it.

This isn't fun to watch. The history is ancient, but not so ancient as to be mythical. The story as Shakespeare creates it is uncomfortably resonant and personal. It is glorious.

Unexpected and brutal, this one.

The Shakespeare Festival Reads group began in May of 2012 during the production of Othello in the glen at Forest Park. I was invited to be a part of choosing books for 2013, fell in love with the reading list, and started attending in 2013. (This is a real danger of bookselling - finding people you like who also like the books you like. Friends.) We weren't scheduled to read this play, but during the spring of 2014, the Donmar Warehouse Theatre's production starring Tom Hiddleston* and Hadley Fraser was broadcast at a local movie theatre. My friends and I were not about to be distracted from all the finery on stage by not knowing the story, so we read the thing. And found it utterly surprising and fantastic.

In performance, of course, it is seething, sweating, bleeding, unyielding and uncomfortable.

At one point in the action Coriolanus is expected to stand in a public place wearing a gown of modesty and baring the scars he has won in action to any of the plebians who ask. It is an act intended to foster goodwill. There is a specific area of my gut that is set aside for moments of physical vulnerability, and it was on fire the entire time.

We left gutted and babbling and deeply grateful to the folks at that theatre for casting the way they did - if Hiddleston hadn't been in it, we wouldn't have read the play.

And that would have been terrible.

#40days40books list

*before we discovered he is super basic