This Bard boy’s just a big Mummy’s boy
Tom Bateman is a burgeoning alpha male of stage and screen who’s been tipped by some to be the next James Bond.
Before that, though, there’s the small matter of this modern-day take on Shakespeare’s most testosterone-fuelled action man. He’s a warlike Roman general who winds up just about everyone he comes near — except his mother.
Being a mother’s boy turns out to be Coriolanus’s weakness as well as his redeeming feature, and yet it’s also what makes him funny as a prototype of Rocky Balboa. He may be a snarling tough guy, but he’s also a whimpering pup in his mother’s dictatorial bosom.
any actor taking him on has to navigate between these poles, and Bateman doesn’t so much navigate as career between them. at times he even looks a little dazed.
to be fair to Bateman, this is not a part you should take on if you want to showcase your subtlety.
He starts by single-handedly storming the town of Corioli, securing his name and nomination to be consul of the Roman Senate. But to win this role he must grovel to sneering commoners. Unable to stomach this, he antagonises them and is sent into exile, where he joins forces with his deadly foes.
to show us his nuance, the former Beecham House star has to settle for doting on his simpering wife, played by deaf actor Hermon Berhane. It’s a nice touch — and quite unusual — having Bateman communicating with her in sign language while their dialogue appears over the stage in text, but it’s incidental to the main action.
His mother is well known for being off her trolley. She alone is allowed to bash Coriolanus’s ears and, when she does, under Stella Gonet’s slightly too friendly fire, his lip quivers and his eyes mist up. Luckily it’s not long before he’s back in action. there’s a gloriously improbable fight at the end where he uses kung-fu as if he were Keanu Reeves in the matrix.
Yet Robert Hastie’s production also wants us to see the play as a meditation on today’s disconnect between politicians and the people. He’s recycled Ben Stones’s set for his 2017 production of Julius Caesar. the Roman Senate is presented like the european Parliament, with grey carpet and beige Charles eames chairs. I found all this a bit bloodless.
also, rough and varied acting styles aren’t up to the complexities of Roman rhetoric. one actor turns British Sign Language into a form of tai chi, while Coriolanus’s enemy aufidius (theo ogundipe) is rendered with a fire-andbrimstone performance worthy of voice-quavering 19th-century actors, and malcolm Sinclair as a William Rees-mogg-ish ally is a model of theatrical probity.
even so, scenes of fire-fighting and blubbing for mummy are far more fun. to achieve consistency in such high-concept productions of Shakespeare, the director needs to be as bossy as Coriolanus. But while Hastie’s political mission goes astray, I was content to bask in Bateman’s histrionic glory — qualities which may yet serve him well as 007.