Among the plays of William Shakespeare, Coriolanus has garnered more respect than love. William Hazlitt, writing in 1816, in the wake of the French Revolution, thought that the play could spare its audience the trouble of reading Edmund Burke or Thomas Paine. The play’s depiction of class division fascinated Bertolt Brecht, who worked on his own adaptation, seeing in the play’s protagonist a figure consistent with the alienation effects of his own theatre. But if such recommendations inspire fears of a drama more didactic than entertaining, they can be dismissed: Bell Shakespeare’s production embraces its audience, ‘patrician’ and ‘plebeian’ alike. 

The play opens in a Rome where the poor are conspiring to enact revenge on the privileged for food shortages that are ravaging their lives. General Caius Martius – later named Coriolanus – berates the people and appears as the embodiment of a condescending and polarising figure. Ruled by his disposition rather than the situation, he enflames where he should appease and shows no concern for the plebeians and their plight. Another early modern playwright had something to say about this kind of scenario: in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, there is a special place in hell for those who ‘laughed to see the poor starve at their gates’.

As Coriolanus, Hazem Shammas combines the charisma of a military hero with human frailty to create a protagonist who propels the action ever forward. The notion of Coriolanus as some kind of automaton is lent credence through a stylised representation of the hero’s deeds against Rome’s enemies the Volsci. Shammas shows the masculine warrior in his element; later, the consul Cominius (played with Stoic exactitude by Gareth Reeves) will remember Coriolanus as ‘a thing of blood’ who ‘struck / Corioli like a planet’. But, having established the protagonist’s heroic credentials, this production swiftly moves on. 

The world of human relationships is for Coriolanus more fraught and dangerous. Pressured by his mother Volumnia (played with domineering aplomb by Brigid Zengeni) to pursue the position of consul, Coriolanus is thrust into the role of politician. However, Shammas has already shown the audience that Coriolanus is otherwise, and that the public realm is for him a version of hell.

It is in this space where the political meets the personal that Peter Evans’s creative team concentrate their efforts. Quick transitions between scenes, with the names of locations telegraphed via a stage backdrop, create pacing effects reminiscent of cinematic cross-cutting. Movement and gesture enliven dialogue that might otherwise strain the audience’s attention. Costume design and tableaux help identify different groups and changing relationships. The sound design (by Max Lyandvert) emphasises what is central to the early republican setting: voices matter more than any formal casting of votes. Most surprisingly, though, this production finds moments of comic relief in a play that is often considered devoid of humour.

Hazem Shammas as Coriolanus and Peter Carroll as Menenius (photograph by Brett Boardman)

That is due to the performers themselves. Peter Carroll as Menenius, the gracious senator and friend to Coriolanus, is sure-footed throughout, using the expressiveness of his voice to signal the varying emotional pitch of the drama. Anthony Taufa as Aufidius, the rival who looms large in Coriolanus’s imagination, has an appropriately imposing presence and, although it is Coriolanus who makes the claim ‘I am constant’, it is Aufidius who proves it through deed. Matilda Ridgway and Marco Chiappi, as the two tribunes Sicinius and Brutus, manage to appear convincing as both shrewd manipulators and hapless victims of their own conniving.

All exchanges between these tribunes are directed towards the achievement of practical ends, and even the metal filing cabinet that is a prop for their elbows functions as a visual emblem of utility. When Coriolanus is goaded by them into a public display of anger, the banishment that is central to his fate is set in motion. But it is the seemingly slight scene that follows that is emblematic of this production’s strengths. Behind a veil and peripheral to the main stage, Coriolanus is seen taking his leave from family and friends. The lighting design (by Amelia Lever-Davidson) creates an impression akin to glimpsing a domestic space from a darkened street. It is not your world, but it is recognisable as something you know. And in showing the fall out from Coriolanus’s grandstanding in the previous scene, this interlude quietly refutes it. It suggests instead that what is most interesting about Coriolanus has not yet been revealed.

With Coriolanus’s banishment, a crisis for Rome looms. Through the plangency of the scene that resolves this crisis – the intercession of Volumnia and Virgilia (Suzannah McDonald) – this production again underscores that, while the political may intrude upon people’s lives, it is in the realm of the personal that meaning resides. In their relief, the Romans quickly forget Coriolanus. The theatre audience, having been complicit in the drama, are not allowed to look the other way. The double-perspective of the play, and the production’s conceit of dividing the audience into plebeians and patricians, are now forgotten. We watch as Coriolanus returns alone to Antium.

The world of this play appears almost irremediably unjust, and at certain moments in the drama it is easy to side with those who dismiss Coriolanus. But even the Romans who expelled Coriolanus saw that a cipher might be preferable to an absence. At play’s end, you might prefer to imagine Hazem Shammas’s achievement as Coriolanus enduring in some extra-theatrical space.

Coriolanus (Bell Shakespeare) continues at Fairfax Studio until 10 August 2025. Performance attended: July 25.