CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
THERE are not many who share Dr. Johnson's opinion that this play is " one of the most amusing of our author's performances." Even when it is produced as forcefully and intelligently as it is by Mr. Glen Byam Shaw at Stratford, we come away from it with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling. Does part of the trouble lie in the fact that, when Coriolanus goes over to the enemies of Rome, he forfeits a part of our sympathies by doing something which we cannot help regarding as monstrous ? Johnson's remark that " the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity " is certainly true of the first half of the play ; but in the second half he acquires the status and the limitations of a juggernaut, and as he moves rather creakingly towards his doom the tragedy dwindles into a superior form of melodrama.
The part is played powerfully and with excellent judgement by Mr. Anthony Quayle, who conveys very well the inner, take-it-or- leave-it integrity from which spring the outward symptom% of arrogance and impetuosity. Mr. Michael Hordern, in a performance with the flavour of a very good dry sherry, invests Menenius Agrippa with the reflective and quizzical authority of a Cecil, Mr. Laurence Harvey lends an exotic and rather feline menace to Tullus Aufidius, and Mr. Aubrey Woods as his henchman plays a negligible part with distinction. Messrs. Powys Thomas and Lyn Evans admirably present the scruffy opportunism of the Tribunes, and the mob at their heels is handled by the producer with great skill and imagina- tion. Miss Siobhan McKenna does all that can be done with Virgilia, but Miss May Ellis's Volumnia was—on the first night— subdued and ineffective. Motley's scenery and costumes are excellent, and the whole production has that air of assured distinc- tion which we have come to expect from Stratford but which seems
temporarily to elude the Old Vic. PETER FLEMING.
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