[In the following review of Jonathan Kent's New York staging of Coriolanus, Lahr contends that Ralph Fiennes's Coriolanus lacked a sense of heroism and that Kent's direction failed to establish a point of view.]

“The higher the monkey climb the tree, the more you see of his behind.” This cautionary folk adage perfectly sums up the appeal of Shakespeare's “Richard II” and “Coriolanus,” two contrasting studies in political meltdown, which arrive from London's vivacious Almeida Theatre for a limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (until October 1st and September 30th, respectively), just in time to rescue the opinion-saturated election-year American public from brain death. Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare was meditating eloquently on issues that are still much debated in our own noisy republic—issues of political savvy, good government, presentational style, and, most contentious of all to the Elizabethan citizen, the “will of the people.” Richard II, a man of sensibility but no political sense, loses his throne; Coriolanus, a warrior who believes in the patrician regard for prowess and not in the democratic respect for consensus, undermines his own potential greatness as a leader. These disparate tragic roles are both taken on by Ralph Fiennes, whose swashbuckling good looks and sharp intelligence lend more than a matinée idol's presence to the performances.

In London, the shows—the brainchild of the Almeida's co-artistic director, Jonathan Kent, who produced and directed—were the summer's hottest tickets. They arrive here, however, without their secret weapon and biggest star—the cavernous, brooding atmosphere of the rough-hewn former soundstage of the Gainsborough Studio, in Shoreditch, which gave these otherwise old-fashioned repertory productions a thrilling sense of eventfulness. At Gainsborough, perched four tiers high, audiences looked down onto Paul Brown's muscular set, from whose brick back wall a large floor-to-ceiling chunk has been gouged out and lit up—an architectural scar that comes to represent the punishing divisions in each play's discontented society. For “Richard II,” the foreground of the stage is covered with real grass, and Richard actually makes his entrance through the crevice. To this play, especially, the behemoth Gainsborough space lent an unusual novelty and an unforgettable sense of immediacy.

Richard II, the first English king to require his subjects to call him “Majesty,” is presented by Shakespeare as a victim of his vainglory. With his delicate hands seeming to float in the air around him, Fiennes captures Richard's effete weakness, but his triumph is one of perspiration rather than of inspiration. We first encounter Richard in a scene in which he makes use of his royal power (an act for which he mints the verb “to monarchize”) to resolve a hectoring quarrel between two nobles of the realm, Bolingbroke and Mowbray. Surrounded by a flattering court and indulged in his capriciousness by the public's acceptance of his divine right, he does so with an impolitic, Draconian flourish: Mowbray is banished forever, and the popular Bolingbroke (the excellent Linus Roache, who is strangely tentative in this role) is exiled for six years. To Shakespeare, this is not so much a show of Richard's frivolity as an example of his bad judgment. Later, Richard again misreads the political landscape; in an attempt to finance incursions into Ireland, he seizes the property of the banished Bolingbroke—“his plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.” The King is a turkey who has just earned himself an early Christmas. His action rallies the nobles against him, emboldens Bolingbroke to return with an army, and insures Richard's infamy as a “most degenerate” ruler.

Despite his omnipotence (“Is not the king's name twenty thousand names? / Arm, arm, my name!”), Richard has no understanding of his subjects and sees no reason to play to them. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is a masterful politician, whose “courtship to the common people” is a spectacle of stage-managed humility; instead of setting himself apart through a show of power, he draws the masses to him by selling them the illusion of equality. Richard's regal imagination boggles at Bolingbroke's lumpen performance: “How he did seem to dive into their hearts / With humble and familiar courtesy; / What reverence he did throw away on slaves, / Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles / And patient underbearing of his fortune.” But Richard has yet to learn the first rule of political life: you don't win the public's heart by showing it your backside. He pays a high price for his ignorance. Most of the play follows the trajectory of Richard II's decline: his capture, his surrender, his imprisonment, and his death.

Shakespeare is as interested in the rise of the new political man—embodied by Bolingbroke—as he is in the fall of the old. Bolingbroke understands the concept of politics as theatre. He knows that public life is designed to be seen by others. At the moment of the transfer of royal power from Richard to him, he says, “Fetch hither Richard, that in common view / He may surrender. So we shall proceed / Without suspicion.” And, at the finale, after the King is murdered, Shakespeare shows us Bolingbroke upbraiding the underling who killed him: “Though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murderer.” Shakespeare ends the play cynically, with a display of the gap between public hyperbole and private behavior. Vowing a pilgrimage to purify his guilty soul and ordering his entourage to don their mourning clothes, Bolingbroke also stage-directs his followers in their final charade of grief: “March sadly after,” he says. “Grace my mournings here / In weeping after this untimely bier.”

By the end of his life, Richard II has learned wisdom and humility (“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me”), and this development makes the play ultimately more satisfying than “Coriolanus,” whose hero learns virtually nothing from his hardships. Fiennes, who can find no humor in the character of Coriolanus, mines instead the innumerable postures of hauteur; in ankle-length overcoat and slicked-back hair, he conveys a certain sneering severity, but there is no sense of the heroic in his voice or in his bearing.

Coriolanus is a kind of Shakespearean Schwarzenegger, an ancient killing machine. He cuts through enemies like “a harvest-man that's tasked to mow,” reaping glory for himself and domination for Rome. His ferocity and contempt—so essential in battle—sow only dissension and distrust at home among the citizens, whom he abominates as “fragments” and “crows to peck the eagles.” Coriolanus can neither abide nor cater to the masses; after his great victory against the Volscians, he only reluctantly wears “a gown of humility” in order to be elected to the consulship. “The tongues o' th' common mouth / I do despise them,” he says. “For they do prank them in authority / Against all noble sufferance.” Democracy is all talk; he is all endeavor. He won't be bound by any authority save his own, and at no time is this clearer than when the citizens banish him as a traitor. Coriolanus refuses their judgment. As he leaves Rome, he declares, “I banish you!,” then adds, “I turn my back. / There is a world elsewhere.” Coriolanus joins the enemy Volscians and his former rival, Tullus Aufidius (the swaggering Linus Roache, in better form), and threatens to destroy his ungrateful former empire.

The ambiguities of “Coriolanus” have lent themselves to many interpretations. In Nazi Germany, for instance, the play was seen as a call for strong leadership. (Consequently, the Allies banned it until 1953.) In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, “Coriolanus” was read, through a Stalinist lens, as a representation of the betrayal of the masses by an individualistic leader. Perhaps in keeping with the bland spirit of New Labour dithering, Jonathan Kent's direction imposes no point of view at all. Despite a compelling performance by the statuesque Barbara Jefford as Volumnia, Coriolanus's war-mongering mother (“Anger's my meat, I sup upon myself”), Kent seems unwilling to risk interpreting the crucial psychology between mother and son. “There's no man in the world / More bound to 's mother,” Volumnia says. “I have lived / To see inherited my very wishes / And the buildings of my fancy.” Although Shakespeare seems to imply that Coriolanus's stiff-necked pride and fury are due to his mother's attention—“My praises made thee first a soldier,” Volumnia tells her son—in this production, extraordinarily, mother and son have no emotional connection. As a result, at the finale, in which Volumnia persuades her intractable son to spare Rome (and in doing so causes his death), Coriolanus's submission seems arbitrary, and Volumnia's ace—to withhold her praise—is played like a deuce. Although he handles crowd scenes well, Kent can't come to grips with the subtlety of private moments. His stagings, like Fiennes's performances, are admirable without being exceptional; they are full of showy flourishes, at once waving and drowning.