[In the following excerpted review, Isherwood assesses director Jonathan Kent's 2000 production of Coriolanus at the Almeida Theatre in London, focusing on Ralph Fiennes's emotionally intense performance in the drama's title role.]

There is [an] … emphasis on comedy in [Jonathan] Kent's Coriolanus. The play has at times been pegged as a satire, and Fiennes gives full and delicious scope to the warrior Coriolanus' wry, disgusted encounters with the Roman tribunes and the people. Also delightfully dry is Oliver Ford Davies as Menenius. … While great leaders rise and fall, and revolutions wax and wane, the subtle, unassuming performances of this capable actor suggest that there will always be men of intelligence, effort and good will who are ground beneath the wheels of the state even as they are instrumental in keeping it on course.

On the whole, the company fares far better in Coriolanus than in [Kent's] Richard II (with the curious exception of Linus Roache, who makes little of the major role of Bolingbroke in Richard II and scarcely more of Aufidius in Coriolanus; his classical verse technique seems to consist primarily of twisting the volume knob up and down haphazardly). David Burke's Comidius and the wily tribunes of Alan David and Bernard Gallagher are effective, but the standout supporting performance in Coriolanus comes from Barbara Jefford as a fire-breathing Volumnia, a mother who most willingly suckled a bloodthirsty warrior and just as willingly betrays him.

But it's Fiennes' mesmerizing Coriolanus that gives the production both its energy and, more surprisingly, its humanity. Fiennes does not offer us merely a bellowing warrior whose excessive pride is his single and simple tragic flaw. He's suitably bloodthirsty as needed (in Kent's boldly drawn conception, Fiennes looks spookily like Carrie at the prom during the Romans' initial battles with the Volscians), but there is a vivid, quixotic nobility in this warrior's pride, and his disdain for public approbation seems to stem from an authentic sensitivity rather than simple churlishness.

With his eyes afire and, in a particularly effective piece of staging, his back turned to public ceremony, Fiennes' Coriolanus is also loyal to a vision of human possibility that everyone else has long since forsaken in favor of more smudged, dissimulating, dishonest personae. Shakespeare's attitude toward the vacillating populace in this play is more nuanced than in others, but in an age when politicians are too wont to follow rather than lead the public, the proud integrity of Fiennes' Coriolanus asserts itself as admirable—even thrilling—and his treatment at the hands of the Romans' is consequently more pitiable.

We share his benumbed march toward vengeance, and when Volumnia bears down upon him with her plea for mercy to Rome, this most political of Shakespeare plays reaches a devastating emotional climax. The hero's mother's strange love, it's easy to see, resulted in a man whose pride may just hide a bone-deep insecurity—he still needs a mother's approval more than anything else. Fiennes plays the scene with shattering stillness, finally crumpling into Volumnia's breast as he capitulates, making us aware that Coriolanus' assent is both an act of mercy and a plea for mercy: Both know his capitulation will cost him his life. It's a deft, brilliant stroke that crowns a thoroughly captivating performance.

Shakespeare productions ultimately rise or fall on their allegiance to the playwright's greatest gift, the truths he tells of the curious workings of human hearts. It's here, surprisingly, that Fiennes' Richard II falls a little short, while his Coriolanus, the manifestly more inhuman hero, succeeds—much like the warrior who bested a city of Volscians—against all odds.