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Coriolanus
Feb. 10th, 2014 09:41 pmLast night I started watching that new production of Coriolanus that Hadley Fraser’s in, because Coriolanus is one of those plays I don’t know enough about so I thought I should give it a try - and then I discovered I’d somehow missed that Tom Hiddleston’s in the lead role??? wow I’m really impressed that either a) the internet managed to keep this a secret for this long or b) I’m that oblivious. I was willing to bet it was the latter. (I was right.)
Tonight I finished watching! And then I was all HUH.
Going into this play the only thing I knew about it was that it had the gayest speech in the entirety of Shakespeare - and dudes, it's true, that speech is pretty damn gay. It's an odd experience, watching a shakespeare play that I don't actually know anything about. For the most part shakespeare is part of popular culture, such that you at least know SOMETHING of it when going in - and heck, when I saw Hamlet the first time I knew pretty much ALL of it already going in without ever having read it or studied it or seen a single bit of it before. But Coriolanus? Nothing. It's just...not a popular play.
And it's really frustrating! Because it means I don't have any previous knowledge of various interpretations to hang my understanding of the play on! I like knowing what other people think about things - because at the very least, even if I strenuously disagree, I at least know where I stand in relation to other interpretations. I have a lens through which to approach the work and say "yes" or "no" or "hmmm" to. But here? I am as a blank slate - and a bit of googling around has only turned up some shallow newspaper reviews, nothing really interesting or thoughtful.
and okay to start off with, for this particular production, I was really impressed - the acting was all excellent, the staging was really interesting, I liked how they did pretty much everything. Tom Hiddleston was magnetic as usual and Hadley Fraser was also fantastic. And I liked that this production cast some women and people of colour - including some cross-gender casting.
but the play itself...idk! I think most of my trouble is that I'm having trouble parsing the character of Aufidius. What are his motivations in everything he does? He's rather opaque! (unless I'm just being particularly slow in understanding.) Coriolanus himself is rather clearer - even though he doesn't ever have a proper soliloquy to explain his thoughts like most Shakespeare leads. But what the heck's going on with Aufidius?( cut for spoilers )
maybe I should just go read through the Aufidius/Martius tag on ao3. Gay fanfiction always has the best Shakespeare meta, right? Right. (OOH IS THERE ANY SLINGS & ARROWS FIC INVOLVING CORIOLANUS? RECS PLS IF YES)
(and if you have any other thoughts/meta/scholarly analysis to send my way on the subject of Coriolanus, please do!)
Tonight I finished watching! And then I was all HUH.
Going into this play the only thing I knew about it was that it had the gayest speech in the entirety of Shakespeare - and dudes, it's true, that speech is pretty damn gay. It's an odd experience, watching a shakespeare play that I don't actually know anything about. For the most part shakespeare is part of popular culture, such that you at least know SOMETHING of it when going in - and heck, when I saw Hamlet the first time I knew pretty much ALL of it already going in without ever having read it or studied it or seen a single bit of it before. But Coriolanus? Nothing. It's just...not a popular play.
And it's really frustrating! Because it means I don't have any previous knowledge of various interpretations to hang my understanding of the play on! I like knowing what other people think about things - because at the very least, even if I strenuously disagree, I at least know where I stand in relation to other interpretations. I have a lens through which to approach the work and say "yes" or "no" or "hmmm" to. But here? I am as a blank slate - and a bit of googling around has only turned up some shallow newspaper reviews, nothing really interesting or thoughtful.
and okay to start off with, for this particular production, I was really impressed - the acting was all excellent, the staging was really interesting, I liked how they did pretty much everything. Tom Hiddleston was magnetic as usual and Hadley Fraser was also fantastic. And I liked that this production cast some women and people of colour - including some cross-gender casting.
but the play itself...idk! I think most of my trouble is that I'm having trouble parsing the character of Aufidius. What are his motivations in everything he does? He's rather opaque! (unless I'm just being particularly slow in understanding.) Coriolanus himself is rather clearer - even though he doesn't ever have a proper soliloquy to explain his thoughts like most Shakespeare leads. But what the heck's going on with Aufidius?( cut for spoilers )
maybe I should just go read through the Aufidius/Martius tag on ao3. Gay fanfiction always has the best Shakespeare meta, right? Right. (OOH IS THERE ANY SLINGS & ARROWS FIC INVOLVING CORIOLANUS? RECS PLS IF YES)
(and if you have any other thoughts/meta/scholarly analysis to send my way on the subject of Coriolanus, please do!)
