Liquid Fire

By T.E.Kalem

CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare

Coriolanus is Shakespeare's prickliest hero. We first see him berating the Roman plebeians as scum simply because they want some bread for their empty bellies. Next we marvel at the man's un matched valor as he bests the Volscians, sometimes in singlehanded combat. The man of flinty aristocratic pride storms into view when he is honored with the rank of Roman consul, only to be banished when he reviles the tribunes of the commoners instead of currying their favor with mock humility and an ostentatious public display of his battle scars. When he turns against Rome and joins its enemies in a temper tantrum of crazed revenge, he is a scalded boy bent on killing the dearest thing he loves.

It takes an actor of liquid fire and the keenest intelligence to carry all of that off, and Morgan Freeman accomplishes it in this rousing production of the play at Joseph Papp's off-Broadway Public Theater. It also requires one other thing, a figure of equal mettle in the tigress role of Coriolanus' mother, Volumnia.

Gloria Foster not only takes the stage, she rules it. With impassioned grandeur, she drives her lethal lance of love through her son's vulnerable heart. She glories in his martial wounds, she would rather see him dead than have his honor stained.

With her pleas, she saves Rome and delivers Coriolanus to his doom. The look of ashen grief frozen on Foster's face at that moment is desolating. Running in repertory with Julius Caesar, Coriolanus makes an auspicious seasonal debut for this new Black-Hispanic troupe. --T.E. Kalem

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