Placard-holding protesters bomb an elegant stage with museum-grade artefacts displayed on plinths. They could be anti-war marchers weaving around city monuments, an underclass demonstrating against government austerity, or a rioting mob stirred up by rabble-rousing populists.
Under the direction of Lyndsey Turner, this evocation of Rome, divided by wealth, heritage and war, bears immediate resonances with the present, with its gulf between the angry masses and the city’s impervious elite class.
Coriolanus (David Oyelowo) initially appears in a double-breasted suit and bow tie, holding a glass of champagne, to remind us that before he is a plain-speaking soldier, he is an aristocrat and sophisticate who regards the plebeians with disdain. It is a potent way to present a character who so often emerges as a soldier already formed.
What is less effective is the force of the drama itself, which is woodenly underpowered and never evokes quite enough feeling. Oyelowo seems mild-mannered and a little anodyne early on in his performance, while characters around him deliver their lines efficiently rather than infusing them with life.
The key relationship between Coriolanus and his mother, Volumnia (Pamela Nomvete), feels distant and approximate. You never feel the son’s visceral need to please, although there is certainly the mother’s commanding love: here she is a ceremonious and hectoring force, but there is little chemistry between them. That is even more so the case for Coriolanus and his wife, Virgilia (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) – any tenderness between them is fleeting.
It is only at the end of the third act, when Coriolanus declares “I banish you!” to Rome as he walks into his own banishment that Oyelowo’s performance comes alive, and fantastically so. It is a thoroughly rousing moment; the production could do with so much more of this passion. The two tribunes, Brutus (Jordan Metcalfe) and Sicinius (Stephanie Street), become the highlight, bringing hand-rubbing scheming and wry humour.
What the play lacks in feeling it makes up for in its look. Es Devlin’s set is brilliantly conceived. Stone pillars that lower intermittently double up as a screen with an opening scene of the crowd from a bird’s-eye view, which conveys a sense of it organising itself, as a visual forecast to the congregation of the plebeians. There are also projections (designed by Ash J Woodward) of digital surveillance footage, Zoom calls and camera closeups of characters that work well. Devlin’s museum display cabinets never quite disappear, even on the battlefield, and it seems like a reminder of the disparities of rich and poor in the city but also a reflection on who is commemorated in history, and who is left out.
Annemarie Woods’ elegant modern-day costumes are another highlight, especially the elaborate widow’s weeds worn by the convoy of women who persuade Coriolanus not to wreak vengeance on Rome with the help of Aufidius (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith).
Coriolanus is so quickly dispatched at the end that you feel little sympathy for Shakespeare’s noble soldier. Maybe this is the point – to show him not only as a proud and honest man who refuses to bend to PR spin in order to appease the people, but also to underline his elitism.
If there is not enough emotional tension in the drama as a whole, there is plenty of action-film energy to the fight scenes between Aufidius and Coriolanus (slow-mo punches and karate kicks), while the battlefield is well-evoked with light (by Tim Lutkin), sound (by Tom Gibbons) and projections. The production is, in the end, a triumph of stagecraft.
At the Olivier theatre, National Theatre, London, until 9 November
