Coriolanus
Last night I saw the Actors' Shakespeare Project's production of Coriolanus.
This is one of the very few plays of Shakespeare that I had never seen performed,1 so I was excited to have the opportunity.
It's an uncomfortable play for modern audiences. The main character is pretty awful by modern standards and most of the script seems to be somebody shouting at someone--an attribute this production emphasized and enhanced. It has some interesting things to say about democracy and the ways in which it can be manipulated.
One of the things I always admire about ASP is the way they make good use of difficult spaces. The Armory is their new headquarters and they will be performing there at least once a year, iirc, and I look forward to their explorations of it.
The production involved a lot of movement work, fight choreography and percussion. From following their blog, I know they had a number of expert advisors, including someone from Stomp! I thought the percussion work was excellent and really added to the mood of the show. A number of other reviews have raved about the fight choreography, but I didn't think it really meshed with the feeling of the show. The costumes and set evoked the Wobblies of the 1920s, but the fights incorporated a lot of karate, which felt jarring. To me they also seemed overly choreographed--I know they have to be, but these looked too smooth, too safe, another thing that clashed with the overall feeling of the show. The one exception was the "cage match" between Coriolanus and Aufidius, which was more percussion than choreography and felt raw and brutal.
The ASP is well-named and can always be counted on for excellent acting. I thought Coriolanus and Aufidius could have been better matched, but they both really threw down on some extremely challenging scenes. Bobbie Steinbach, as Volumnia, completely owned this show. She is always exciting and engaging and here she got to really let it out.
I think my favorite thing about the show was the blocking.2 Filling that vast cavern with such a relatively small cast was no mean feat and the result often reminded me of Mark Morris' choreography as the groups moved and flowed across the stage from one pattern to the next. I would love to chart this with regard to the objectives of the various characters--it happened too quickly and casually to track, but I'm sure that was there.
I'm still waiting for ASP to wow me as they did with Twelfth Night, but I really appreciate them taking on Coriolanus and producing an ambitious and thought-provoking performance of it. On the whole, however, it made me want to direct Midsummers.
1The remaining three are Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens and Two Gentlemen of Verona.
2What can I say? I'm a director.
This is one of the very few plays of Shakespeare that I had never seen performed,1 so I was excited to have the opportunity.
It's an uncomfortable play for modern audiences. The main character is pretty awful by modern standards and most of the script seems to be somebody shouting at someone--an attribute this production emphasized and enhanced. It has some interesting things to say about democracy and the ways in which it can be manipulated.
One of the things I always admire about ASP is the way they make good use of difficult spaces. The Armory is their new headquarters and they will be performing there at least once a year, iirc, and I look forward to their explorations of it.
The production involved a lot of movement work, fight choreography and percussion. From following their blog, I know they had a number of expert advisors, including someone from Stomp! I thought the percussion work was excellent and really added to the mood of the show. A number of other reviews have raved about the fight choreography, but I didn't think it really meshed with the feeling of the show. The costumes and set evoked the Wobblies of the 1920s, but the fights incorporated a lot of karate, which felt jarring. To me they also seemed overly choreographed--I know they have to be, but these looked too smooth, too safe, another thing that clashed with the overall feeling of the show. The one exception was the "cage match" between Coriolanus and Aufidius, which was more percussion than choreography and felt raw and brutal.
The ASP is well-named and can always be counted on for excellent acting. I thought Coriolanus and Aufidius could have been better matched, but they both really threw down on some extremely challenging scenes. Bobbie Steinbach, as Volumnia, completely owned this show. She is always exciting and engaging and here she got to really let it out.
I think my favorite thing about the show was the blocking.2 Filling that vast cavern with such a relatively small cast was no mean feat and the result often reminded me of Mark Morris' choreography as the groups moved and flowed across the stage from one pattern to the next. I would love to chart this with regard to the objectives of the various characters--it happened too quickly and casually to track, but I'm sure that was there.
I'm still waiting for ASP to wow me as they did with Twelfth Night, but I really appreciate them taking on Coriolanus and producing an ambitious and thought-provoking performance of it. On the whole, however, it made me want to direct Midsummers.
1The remaining three are Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens and Two Gentlemen of Verona.
2What can I say? I'm a director.