Like its current Mojada, The Public Theater is presenting another production combining classic and modern templates and resonating with our present moment of political dysfunction. Director Daniel Sullivan transports Shakespeare’s Coriolanus from ancient Rome to a post-apocalyptic future. On Central Park’s Delacorte stage, set designer Beowulf Boritt creates a “Mad Max” fantasy world of burnt-out autos, discarded metal, and junked plastic bottles. The grain famine which drives the Roman citizens to desperation becomes a water shortage in a nuked-out wasteland. Their madness turns to anarchy as they are manipulated by self-interested tribunes to banish their haughty military leader Coriolanus.
The play is infrequently performed because the titular soldier is so inflexible and rigid. Yet Jonathan Cake captures not only the physicality of this muscular role—it’s believable everyone is afraid of him—but also shades Coriolanus’s stubborn dignity. He transforms from war machine to bawling boy in the presence of his mother (a magnificently domineering Kate Burton) and back to raging tiger.
Teagle F. Bougere and Tom Nelis are appropriately sage as two elder statesmen and Jonathan Hadary and Enid Graham convincingly represent the petty jealousies of the tribunes. Sullivan’s blasted-heath vision is a perfect fit for Shakespeare’s tale of modern-day political manipulation and madness, demonstrating that in the right hands familiar themes can be given vital, new, and dangerous life.
