SOURCE: Shore, Robert. “Masked Combat.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5074 (30 June 2000): 19.

In the following review, Shore assesses Jonathan Kent's production of Coriolanus for London's Almeida Theater. Shore notes that Kent's production focused on the personal aspects of the play rather than on the social and political elements.

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 obviously concerned with questions of state power, in Jonathan Kent's staging the personal is constantly...