Shakespeare's Caius Martius Coriolanus is a difficult character for most modern western audiences. He might go down rather well on a US Marine base in Iraq, but his bull-headed pursuit of military glory and frenzied defence of his own extraordinarily developed sense of personal honour sit rather oddly in modern London. The Jacobean audience might have seen nobility, if of a flawed kind; we see only dangerous, self-regarding ego.
Coriolanus is thus a huge challenge for the first production of the new director of Shakespeare's Globe, Dominic Dromgoole. When the first night crowd applauded as the gates of the city closed on Rome's expelled military hero in Act Four, I wondered if Dromgoole was up to the challenge.
Up to this point Jonathan Cake's military hero is all dash, muscle and buzzing charisma. Even his words can scarcely keep up with him; too many are lost in the rushing air. On the odd moment he is standing still, his petulant jutting jaw and tantrum-stamping feet are too reminiscent of a three-year-old to be taken seriously as a national figure, even of the most Homeric type.
Sympathy, as reflected in the applause, rests with the plebian forces driving him from Rome in response to his would-be-tyrannical scorn, even though Shakespeare clearly means even an audience like this to have no sympathy with the two unctuous tribunes (Frank McCusker as Sicinius Velutus and John Dougall as Junius Brutus) orchestrating their revolt.
In the second act, however, Cake slows down, and Coriolanus develops into a figure of some depth, some feeling. In this newly opened space, other characters also flower, from his driven mother Volumnia (a virtuoso performance from Margot Leicester) to Robin Soans' well-meaning but limited patrician Menenius Agrippa, who just wants to be friends with everyone and enjoy peace and a comfortable life.
At this new, more comfortable, pace the words — both comic and tragic — are given their proper weight, and inspiration takes over from perspiration as the driving force of the production. The juxtaposition of opposite characters, the warrior Coriolanus and the man of peace Menenius, the unfulfilled, driven Volumnia and the loving , gentle wife Virgilia (Jane Murphy) is allowed to settle and take shape on the stage.
The balance between drama and light relief also develops in the second half of the play after the military derring-do of the first; the encounter between the buffoonish serving men of the Volscian general Tullus Audifius (Mo Sesay) and the disguised Coriolanus is one of those little gems of entertainment balanced by the tension of an audience that knows far more than the characters on stage that Shakespeare constructed so well.
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