By Manning Harris for Atlanta INtown, 3 June 2015
The Shakespeare Tavern is currently running a bold, clever, and powerful production of “Coriolanus,”one of Shakespeare’s lesser produced plays, running through June 14. Directed by Drew Reeves, some of the city’s best actors are giving robust and magnetic performances.
I don’t know why “Coriolanus” isn’t performed more frequently: It’s got everything modern audiences are supposed to crave. Violence (plenty), political trickery and intrique, treason, a touch of aberrant sexuality, blood (and more violence), ferocious family politics, tons of suspense—everything our sensational, gun-obsessed society loves is here.
But I’ve never seen the play until now, and I’ve seen a lot of Shakespeare. Of course, you know that since the demise of Georgia Shakespeare, the Tavern is Atlanta’s sole full-time dispenser of the Bard; although any company can do Shakespeare when it wishes—the scripts are public domain.
But the Tavern, which many of its die-hard fans like to think of as our own Globe Theatre (it does resemble it, with an atmosphere unlike any other theatre in the nation), is happy and fearless and up for the challenge, and proves it with this bracing “Coriolanus.”
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