Coriolanus incorporated

Abstract

Shortly after the Irangate hearings in Washington, and immediately before the presidential election of 1988, the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego presented a modern-dress production of Coriolanus in an adaptation by John Hirsch. In many ways, this was a typically American exercise in Shakespearian revisionism, the likes of which one might encounter in Stratford, Connecticut, the New York Shakespeare Festival or, for that matter, England’s National Theatre. This was Shakespeare up-dated, transplanted geographically (from Rome to Washington DC and Nicaragua), the text interpolated with colloquial additions and the whole posture altered so as to be contemporaneous with recent events. In short, the kind of production that causes seizures among the purists and transports of delight among those who like their classics liberally spiced up.