Power play
By JAMES VANCE World Staff Writer 12/5/01
Owen Froeschle, (left) and other "citizens" hold up a banner that reads "The people are hungry" in a scene from the Midwestern Theater Troupe's production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. JOHN CLANTON / Tulsa World
Shakespeare's most problematic play comes to the stage as -- a clown show?
For just under four centuries, the austere and uncompromising "Coriolanus" has been regarded as one of the most problematic among Shakespeare's late tragedies. Filled with political debates and revolving around an unsympathetic protagonist whose overbearing pride and arrogance proves to be a fatal flaw, it's been called one of the least audience-friendly works in the author's canon.
Well, maybe that was just the snap judgment of the past 400 years. According to director John Cruncleton, there's actually plenty in the show to keep theatergoers entertained. In fact, by his estimation it's barely a tragedy at all.
"This is essentially a black comedy with a little genuine tragedy," noted Cruncleton in a recent exchange of e-mails and telephone conversations. "The tragedy is in the absurdity of life itself. The characters are broad and vigorous, almost vaudevillian in their clownlike unbalance of humours . . . All in all, I feel this play is closer to a clown show than a serious political drama."
Given the play's long association with the theater's great tragedians -- not to mention its snug fit within the parameters of the classical definiton of tragedy -- one may wonder how Cruncleton (who not only directs the upcoming Midwestern Theater Troupe production but plays the title role) can see "Coriolanus" in mostly comic terms.
"That's just the way it struck me," he said.
Fair enough, at least until the audience has its say; but what kind of clown show can theatergoers expect when the houselights fade?
Not quite the Ringling Brothers variety, as it turns out. "The power relationships are the play's true study," said Cruncleton, "mother to son being most dominant. Rome to her own brood, state to mob, mob to individual, all these are explored . . . The title character is a socially inept brat whose only eloquence of expression is combat, whose mother is a bloody-breasted autocrat, and whose wife is a `gracious silence' . . . The extremity of these characters, each to its own preponderance of humours, suggests the clown, whose character is often the result of a monomaniacal viewpoint."
Shakespeare's story concerns a Roman general named Caius Martius who is awarded the honorary surname "Coriolanus" after an impressive military victory. Guided by his ambitious mother, he enters politics -- but he's too arrogant and contemptuous of the Roman people to pander successfully for their votes. Undone by his own lack of humility and the backbiting of his political enemies, he leaves Rome and offers his services to Aufidius, the enemy general he'd recently defeated. They plan to attack Rome and bring the great city down, but Coriolanus is dissuaded at the eleventh hour by his mother's pleading and accepts a peace treaty. During the bitter argument with Aufidius that follows, Coriolanus is killed, the victim of his own stiff-necked pride.
That's not really the stuff of your basic laugh riot, but it's easier to accept Cruncleton's view of the play when one considers the way Shakespeare depicts the masses who influence much of the action. By the time "Coriolanus" was written (about 1608) the playwright had become a conservative man of property, a nouveau upper-middle-class snob who seemed to have little regard for the rabble with whom he'd once rubbed shoulders. The crowd scenes in "Coriolanus" are perhaps the most vivid evidence of his view of common humanity. Where a similar group in the earlier "Julius Caesar" was pictured as a sheeplike mob easily swayed by powerful rhetoric, in "Coriolanus" the citizenry is depicted as destructively fickle and hypocritical.
"The chaotic mob," said Cruncleton, "is a central metaphor . . . It coughs up all the main characters and eventually swallows them up again, and occasionally rampages as a sort of Chinese dragon -- which we represent with a big puppet that's a lot of fun to look at." The entire production, in fact, is set in what he calls "a neutral clown-type Rome, sort of a playground environment that underscores the absurdity of all these power clashes. Instead of period costumes, we're using simple hooded outfits, and the sword Coriolanus carries into battle is obviously just a plain piece of wood. We've tried to disconnect from a realistic classical setting so the audience can have a clear look at the basic power relationships."
In addition to Cruncleton, the cast includes Heather Smith as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia, Sara Cruncleton as Valeria, Kaylee Fort as Virgilia, Dale Sams as Aufidius, Larry Latham as Meneni, Richard Slemaker as Brutus and George Nelson as Sicinius. MarkChandler, Owen Froeschle, Stephen Haines, Sally Hedgecock, Jenny Jackson, Margaret Leighty, Steve Nuchia, Amy Wilson, Jae Wilson and Jeff Whitlatch play various supporting roles as well as members of the highly vocal mob.
Midwestern Theater Troupe presents "Coriolanus."
When: Thursday-Saturday and December 13-15 at 8 p.m.
Where: Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth Street.
Tickets: All seats $5. Call 583-8487 [As of February 2007, 633-8666].
James Vance, World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8474 or via e-mail at james.vance@tulsaworld.com.