SOURCE: “Masked Combat,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 5074, June 30, 2000, p. 19.

In the following review, Shore approves of Jonathan Kent's staging of Coriolanus, starring Ralph Fiennes in the title role, and praises the psychological treatment of the characters. Shore also finds that despite Kent's decision to ignore the issue of class conflict, the play “emerges whole, and very nearly a great play.”

In the opening moments of the Almeida's production of Coriolanus, it is sometimes difficult to make out what the citizens gathered deep upstage are so upset about. In the hangar-like acoustic of the Gainsborough Studios, a number of early lines are lost—until, that is, Paul Moriarty as the First Citizen clears his throat to deliver his mocking indictment of Coriolanus' valour in battle: “'e did it to please 'is mother!” The effect might almost be deliberate. Though of all Shakespeare's works Coriolanus is the play most...