Summary 
Modernized outdoor production plays on four levels of stage, with an anti-hero action-movie Coriolanus wielding an Uzi descending from a rope before blowing open a door with plastic explosives and later arriving via a thirty-foot night-time rappel. Entertaining condemnation of mob mentality and political and personal disloyalty.
Design
Directed by John Sipes. Set by John C. Stark. Costumes by Rene Chadwick. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Roderick Peeples.
Cast
Philip Earl Johnson (Coriolanus), Ned Schmidtke (Cominius), Ryan Lee (Lartius), David Kortemeier (Menenius), Jack McLaughlin-Gray (Sicinius), Walter Brody (Brutus), Aldo Billingslea (Aufidius), Cheryl Leigh Williams (Volumnia), Carrie Lee Patterson (Virgilia).
Analysis
Former artistic director John Sipes (1990-1995) returns to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival to direct an action-packed modern-day Coriolanus. Aptly described in a mid-season aside by current artistic director Calvin MacLean as "King John on anabolic steroids," the story of Martius Coriolanus unfolds on a stage strewn with mesh fences and metal ramps and scaffolds. Action takes place on four ascending levels: the thrust stage; an overhead gallery; an upper balcony accessed by ladder; and finally a crow's nest - thirty feet above the stage and between lighting standards - reached via scant metal scaffolding.
The production begins with a pair of vagrants sitting back to back at center stage, their arms stretched seeking a handout. Amid amplified crowd noises, alarm bells, and siren wails, they scatter as the stage fills with fleeing commoners. Modern soldiers, wearing black military uniforms and carrying assault rifles, storm the stage like a police SWAT team. They pursue scurrying young adults, most of whom are dressed as protesters in fingerless gloves, jeans, bandanas, and backward baseball hats. The kids fight back with sticks, shovels and baseball bats, chanting "Down with Martius!" and pounding the stage with their makeshift weapons.
The plebeians, claiming to "hunger for bread, not thirst for revenge," set up microphones, run wire, and place small flags across the balcony for a hostile 2.3 interview with the victorious Coriolanus. Sipes illustrates the commoner prevalence by having them stand on the steps between sections of seats and in front of microphones on podiums behind the audience. Coriolanus faces them in the ceremonial "gown of humility" - a cream-colored toga - and he looks as foolish as his character must feel. He raps on the microphone to see if it functions but does not use it, instead addressing their claims with his unamplified voice. During the Julius Caesar-like 3.1 changing of the mob mind, politicians in black suits must hold a crush of rabble back from Coriolanus - apparently "too noble for the world" - until Lartius scatters them with pistol shots.
Philip Earl Johnson plays the title role with stern arrogance, a vitriolic temper, and an action-movie hero's physical strength and dexterity. He first appears in the balcony dressed entirely in black, looking Aryan with his spiked blond hair, brutish military behavior, and unbridled contempt for the masses. He leaps down into the crowd, who rush from him in fear, and he insults them as "rabble" and "fragments." His fellow soldiers are also attired in red-trimmed black military fatigues, and Lartius leans on a single crutch, while Cominius wears a black eye-patch.
Johnson's Martius is promoted and named Coriolanus in 1.9 to a dissonant musical score. He sits at stage center, his arm in a sling, drinking from a canteen as fog billows from five stage floor grates. When confronted with the 3.4 prospect of banishment - and the crowd's insistent chant of "it shall be so!" - he first dismisses the "common cry of curs," then descends into vitriol, screaming back at them, "I banish you!" He then spits at them and turns his back on their hisses.
The secondary political characters are imaginatively portrayed. The noble Menenius - moved to tears at Coriolanus' 4.1 banishment - wears a black double-breasted suit, and he fires a gunshot to silence the 1.1 mob. He then disarms one man and offers a cigarette from a gold case to another. Menenius joins the "old men" tribunes - Sicinius and Brutus - when they emerge in 2.1 on a sliding platform from beneath the gallery. They sit on a park bench, and Sicinius casually sips from a strawed drink and eats french fries while Brutus dines on a hot dog and a drink. Menenius refers to them as "infant-like" and sits between them and throws his arms over their shoulders. In intimidation, he takes a sip from one of their drinks, then takes a french fry and looks at it before dropping it with disgust. He does not conceal his disdain for these supposed voices of the people, and as the platform slides from view, Menenius closes the doors upon them with distaste.
Sicinius and Brutus, older men clad in shirts and ties with sport coats, emerge in 3.4 from a center stage trap. They blow a whistle to summon the plebeians, who burst onstage from all entrances. After the commoner victory, the two politicians remain center stage as flag-like banners are torn down, and the crowd joyously runs circles around them in a hand-held dance. Sipes reveals Sicinius' and Brutus' fat-cat arrogance by staging 4.6 in a steam room. The lounging tribunes, attended by women in black shorts and red shirts, wear only white bath-towels and drink bottled water. They scoff at the rumor of an alliance between Coriolanus and the Volscians, but hurriedly dress at the announcement of an approaching army. Caught with his pants down, Brutus hurriedly exits with his pant legs ludicrously stuffed into his socks.
Aufidius - bald, goateed, and menacing - leads the enemy Volscians in his green military fatigues and black sunglasses. He first appears during 1.2 in the second level gallery, flanked by men wearing plain brown suits. In displays of Coriolanus-like rage, Aufidius seizes one advisor by the throat, throttles him, then shoves him toward an upstage exit in dismissal, and in 1.10 he tears down a Roman flag, then threatens suicide by placing the barrel of a pistol in his mouth. Sipes correlates the two opponents in 4.4, when Coriolanus pulls the barrel of Aufidius' pistol to his own temple and urges the general to shoot. Later in the scene, the two soldiers playfully slap at each other and wrestle before fist-fighting and finally forging an alliance against the Romans.
Sipes depicts Coriolanus' 1.3 family life as a domestic lull to heighten the sudden 1.4 violence. The family gathers before red curtains that flank an oil portrait of Coriolanus wearing a military cap and uniform. Virgilia, wearing a cream-colored gown, knits from long red fabric while Volumnia paces and frets. War and violence dominate their culture - they have a bodyguard of six black-clad soldiers, each wielding a gray shield - and Coriolanus' son plays downstage with a toy battle-tank. Volumnia wears a black dress, Valeria black leather pants with a red shirt and bracelet - much like the military flag - and it becomes apparent that Virgilia is knitting a military banner with a black bird of prey at its center.
As the Volscians assemble in menacing fashion and in green lighting, martial music begins to pulsate, and Virgilia's red flag whisks upward on pulleys with dramatic suddenness to a height of over thirty feet. Accompanied by a stirring musical score, the subsequent scene looks and sounds like a house-to-house combat scene from a Hollywood war film. Johnson's Coriolanus appears in the crows' nest with an uzi sub-machine gun, spotlit amid billowing smoke. Flashpots erupt from the five stage traps as Coriolanus descends on a rope from a lighting catwalk to a ramp at stage right, scattering Volscians with machine gun bursts. He leaps to the stage and blows open the main stage door with a blast from plastic explosives, but when he disappears within, his squad of eight soldiers hesitates to follow. Moments later, Coriolanus re-appears in the gallery, battling Volscian defenders alone and in slow motion, and as more flashpots explode on stage, the inspired Roman soldiers rally, shout, and assault the building.
A smart and fiery Volumnia, wearing a red shawl over her black dress for the 2.2 victory celebration, is as emotionally twisted as her son: "he is wounded - thank the gods for it." Amid trumpets, amplified crowd cheers, and thundering music, Coriolanus appears in stolid mastery, wearing a black dress-military uniform. Confetti bursts from high over both sides of the stage and glitters in swirling spotlights as it drifts in the breeze. Two long black banners unfurl as Virgilia stands at Coriolanus' side, resembling Jackie Kennedy in her simple but elegant dress and pony tail. Maintenance workers in jumpsuits sweep the fallen confetti into a stage trap to begin 2.3, discussing their malleable allegiance.
Volumnia wears a scarlet dress for her 3.2 confrontation with her banished son. The normally resolute Coriolanus rubs his jaw in trepidation, and he paces and pauses before speaking with her. When his temper flares, he grabs a wooden table and raises it over his head as if to throw it, then stands there foolishly to listen to his mother, the table still aloft over his head. Volumnia slaps his face and strikes him in the chest in her own considerable fury before her son drops the table and slowly climbs from level to level - stage to gallery to upper balcony to crows' nest - marking his 4.1 exile and intermission. When he makes his 5.3 return as an invading enemy, Coriolanus kneels before his mother - now dressed again entirely in black - and she makes him stand to address her. He hesitates repeatedly before exiting, making apparent his unwillingness to pursue the conquering of Rome.
Sipes peppers the production with striking visuals and combat sequences. For example, in 1.8, Coriolanus re-appears with an exposed and bleeding shoulder, blood smeared across his forehead, and a bandage wrapped around his midsection, and jubilant Roman soldiers chant his name before hoisting him to their shoulders. Moments later, upon a green-lit stage but in sudden red lighting, he wages single combat with Aufidius, who bursts from the stage center doors. When Coriolanus gains the upper hand, a Volscian soldier attempts to assist his general, but Aufidius - in his noble rage much like Coriolanus - seizes a pistol from another observer and shoots the man who tried to unfairly help him. And in the 4.4 Antium scene, the "mean appareled" Johnson rappels thirty feet in darkness from atop a towering wall at stage right. Once on stage and free from his rappel apparatus, he creeps among probing spotlights, then kneels by stairs to observe Volscian soldiers swigging from liquor bottles and cavorting with short-skirted prostitutes.
Sipes drives the play toward a sudden conclusion. After the 5.5 heralding of Volumnia - "the life of Rome" - in twirling spotlights, loud music, an amplified welcome, and rousing cheers, Coriolanus appears in the gallery to the 5.6 applause of Volscians. But the plebeian crowd turns again, this time at the prompting of Aufidius. Johnson's Coriolanus descends to the stage, where three assassins stab him. In red lighting, Coriolanus falls face down, and amid a chant of "kill kill kill!" Aufidius murders him with a single pistol shot. The rabble gather in an ugly mass to kick and stomp his prone body, and Sipes' visceral production concludes on this decidedly appropriate note of abruptly and irrevocably senseless mob cruelty.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.19, No.4, Fall 2001.