2 October 2024

The National’s modern Coriolanus

David Oyelowo is best as Rome’s greatest soldier when he loses his temper.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Patrick Elue. Photo by Misan Harriman

There’s always a need to find a current-affairs hook for a Shakespeare production – why, I ask, when the plays won’t die – and the programme for this production starring David Oyelowo and directed by Lyndsey Turner features a foreword from Rory Stewart, writing from the Chicago Democratic National Convention. There is more of British politics, if anything, in the tale of a hard-working general coming to rule in a world where no one cares about his integrity.

Es Devlin’s stunning set – she has designed for Beyoncé – looks like a chicer version of the British Museum; a replica of the Elgin Marbles adds contemporary tension, and other beautiful, strange objects in glass cases remind you that for everyone apart from Boris Johnson, ancient Rome really is remote.

Coriolanus is one of the lesser-quoted plays, but this production received plenty of laughs from the audience: why is it that one or two actors always seem to be able to “chat” Shakespeare so naturally it could be the script to Coronation Street? In the mouth of Peter Forbes, with his faintly Falstaffian take on “campaign manager” Menenius, the play is crammed with the kind of lines that make their way on to Shakespeare mugs: “[I am] one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.”

The bond between the emperor and his mother is at the play’s heart, and Pamela Nomvete brings both dignity and convincing emotional pressure: the scene where his family glides on stage in widow’s weeds to beg him to come back to Rome is hair-raising. But there’s a lack of loving physicality from Oyelowo – towards his mother, his wife (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) and his young son (Kaelum Nelson), whom he might atleast have looked at. I loved his outbursts of temper, though – the thing that no one, not even Trump, can really have in office. He really blows it when pushed, the clearest sign of his virtue.