4 stars out of 5
I have quite a history with this play. I saw it the first time I went to the Oregon Shakepeare Festival in Ashland with my mother in 1962. I was 10. My brother, Steve (8), was disappointed when the actor came out for a bow: "He was dead!". It was also the last play I saw in Ashland with my mother in 1996. It was performed in modern dress, which she hated. She lived another 14 years, but she never went back to Ashland. In addition, I have seen it two or three times at the California Shakespeare Festival. Now, my younger daughter is considering majoring in Shakespeare, so we ambled into the Embarcadero Center Cinema in SF for the extremely limited run (about 9 theaters in the whole country) of the Ralph Fiennes-directed version of Coriolanus which almost certainly is NOT coming to a theater near you. Writer Josh Logan trimmed the play down to two hours. It is decidedly set in modern times, with the battle looking very Iraq/Afghanastan 2012. Fiennes takes the title role, and the other male leads are venerable actors Gerard Butler and Brian Cox. The show, however, is stolen by Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' mother. At 75, she just keeps getting better and better, and here she steals the show. It is a story of rejection and revenge, and a classic tragedy, in that the very characteristics that made the hero a hero bring him down in the end. If it does get anywhere near you, see it.
