Theater Review: KateBurton and JonathanCake in the Shakespeare in the Park production of 'Coriolanus'
isn't produced very often ; Shakespeare's dense tragedy is one of his more challenging plays, lacking both soaring poetry and sympathetic characters, and filled with long philosophical discussions about politics and class differences. It's a drama that requires intense concentration, something that can prove difficult outdoors on a sweltering summer night featuring the competing sounds of nature and the city.
Sullivan delivers a basically straightforward staging, devoid of high concept, that places the emphasis squarely on the text. Fortunately, he has enough solid performers in the supporting cast who can deliver it well, including Teagle F. Bougere as Coriolanus' fellow patrician and friend Menenius; Louis Cancelmi as Aufidius, the Volscian general with whom Coriolanus forms a temporary alliance; and Amelia Workman as Valeria, a family friend who joins Volumnia in her pleas to spare Rome.
The production's chief stylistic conceit is its vaguely modernistic, dystopian setting, something that has become such a cliched theatrical and cinematic trope that a long-term moratorium should be established. Rusting garbage cans, a burnt-out car and other assorted detritus litter Beowulf Boritt's scenic design, dominated by a large corrugated metal shed .
Worse still are Kaye Voyce's raggedy costumes, which not even the most indiscriminating thrift shop would accept as a donation. More problematically, nearly everyone onstage wears the same decrepit style, meaning that telling the patricians and plebeians apart often becomes a guessing game. The overall bleakness proves instantly wearying; the battle-heavy play has more than its share of bloody moments, but that shouldn't mean that our eyes have to bleed as well.
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