Fight Clip Club: Coriolanus

I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee.

‘We hate alike.’

Now, I’m a sucker for a well performed Shakespeare. And I’m one of those that cherishes a well done modern setting for a Shakespeare play, too–as long as the newer setting makes sense with the themes and ideas of the story, and doesn’t change any fundamentals about character or plot, it can be a brilliant way to enjoy these plays that are still relevant centuries after their creation. Plus, it can open up what’s a difficult silent read for someone not accustomed to the oldy moldy language: it puts a viewer there in the action, in a way more accessible way than pumpkin pants and codpieces might.

I’ve known two Twelfth Night productions set in Victorian England that worked great: the movie starring Helena Bonham-Carter and Ben Kingsley, and a stage production I understudied for at the CO Shakespeare Fest. That setting made the odd underlay of darkness within the comedy come to the fore in a way that matched well with all the black bustles of the 1890s. I remember a Wild West setting for Twelfth Night, too, at CU Boulder right before I graduated high school and was about to attend. The director told us that all the talk of ‘draw’ made him think of old time Westerns, the OK Corral and such. The jester in that show wore a colorful sarape, and the famous yellow cross garters were worn in the form of a full Native outfit of the area, making Malvolio’s inappropriateness of dress that much more so.

That ‘draw your sword’ bit makes me think of the Baz Luhrman Romeo + Juliet, too, which I adored. (Read more about that here.) But many of Shakespeare’s histories are pretty adherent to the Wars of the Roses, right? But there have been many wars since that those plays have been placed in and they seem to work well—war is war, I suppose. And Coriolanus is considered one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, not histories, even though it’s ostensibly the Romans vs. the Volscians. In my mind, setting this play here in current times allows for so much deeper storytelling and character development. One example that took my breath away was the bold (and totally brilliant) choice of making Volumnia a military vet. That’s something that wasn’t in Shakespeare, but holy cow, does it give her overbearing character and fraught relationship with Coriolanus so much depth and makes so much sense.

But I’m not talking about her in this fight, I’m afraid. Let’s look at the main duel that spurs most of the rest of the action instead, shall we?

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