Coriolanus starring David Oyelowo at the National Theatre – review

Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s greatest leading roles – and one of his trickier plays. The new production at the National Theatre features a thrilling central performance by David Oyelowo, now best known as a movie star for films such as Selma.

But it’s weighted down by a set by Es Devlin that makes every scene look sensational, but also like a spread in The World of Interiors. And by a score by Angus MacRae that loads each moment with ever louder significance. Lyndsey Turner’s direction is claustrophobic and tightly controlled, when sometimes the emotions of the play seem to cry out for breathing space.

It opens as the great towers of Devlin’s set rise skywards, revealing a museum-like space of elegant pools of light (lighting design by Tim Lutkin), and artefacts representing the glories of ancient civilisation that a group of protestors are about to attack, to make their point about poverty in Rome. As soon as Oyelowo’s Coriolanus appears, smooth in a velvet suit, it’s obvious that he is both proud and patrician, a protector of the values that those objects represent.

Yet his exceptional heroism on the battlefield – depicted in scenes where shields gleam like gold coins and slo-mo warriors battle in silhouette – is matched by his complete inability to play at politics when he’s back in civilian life in Rome.

When he’s asked to beg for the vote of the common people in order to become consul, Oyelowo seems sadly baffled, genuinely puzzled that he has to make his case to people he despises. Coriolanus is such a complex character – particularly in the modern age – because his brand of contempt for the “mutable rank-scented many” is based partly in his belief in the greater knowledge and sophistication of the elite – and partly in his sense of his own character.

His notions of loyalty to his code are ones he does not stoop to betray, and Oyelowo, stiff-necked and straight-backed, conveys all of that, making the hero both loathsome and admirable, his own man in a world that has ceased to value what he stands for. Turner’s implication seems to be that his views make him as much of a museum piece as the objects that litter high society Rome.

Yet the very smooth specificity of Devlin’s settings, which involve a lot of characters (mainly the women) moving a vase from one place to another, cuts against the dramatic force of the arguments. Over and over again, the show looks great but stays static. It’s smart to place the tribunes (a sardonic Stephanie Street and the weasley Jordan Metcalfe, reliably brilliant) in a swanky tailor’s, dressing up in their new clothes (costumes by Annemarie Woods), as war breaks out around them. But it’s more problematic to stage Coriolanus’s great confrontation with his formidable mother Volumnia as a kind of fashion show in black widow’s weeds.

Even Pamela Nomvete’s powerhouse, ferocious performance can’t quite catch the feeling wrapped up in that scene, where Coriolanus puts his love for his mother above his hatred for the motherland that has banished him (“There is a world elsewhere”). The bonds between mother and son are stretched by direction that sets them apart.

Individual performances make their mark. Peter Forbes is convincing, as the silken Menenius, master of all the political arts that Coriolanus despises; Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is imposing as his arch-rival and later ally Aufidius.

Yet it’s a slick production rather than an involving one. Its hard exterior seems to prevent engagement, offering a brilliant simulacrum rather than digging beneath the surface to the feelings beneath.