Word: babe
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Some more speculation: Babe's use of film and other media conflicts with his rather pedestrian notion of a crowd of puppets--clown-like figures unable to stand straight who exist only insofar as they are manipulated by the tribunes or swayed by mass instinct. The crowd is conceived as pantomime, the movies as a sophisticated blend of film and drama, and the two styles belong to two different kinds of production. Shakespeare made the crowd puppet-like enough; Babe extends the metaphor and is heavy-handed...
...with the exception of a wonderful section where we see (on film) two plebeians reading a newspaper transcript of Coriolanus's "I banish you!" speech, Babe carefully avoids the trap of showing masses influenced by media. The film clips, evenly spaced throughout, never interrupt the action. The technique works best in the scene between Aufidius and his Lieutenant. Babe plays only half the scene on stage, the second half on the film soundtrack: the stage blacks-out and we watch Coriolanus of film, still listening to Aufidius talk about him. Alfred Guzetti's camerawork on these clips is, in context...
Equally interesting, if not always as successful, is Babe's substitution of a loudspeaker for the proverbial Shakespearian messenger: when a panicstricken Rome first hears that Coriolanus may be allied with the Volscians, Babe stages a fast dialogue between Menenius, the tribunes, and the loud speaker, eerie in the momentary illusion that the loud speaker is quite conscious of what the other three are saying. The use of film and speaker projection proves Babe's most successful instinct in Coriolanus and the device most fully resolved; the harrowing ending is played simultaneously on stage and film; Babe requires a dual...
...diverse elements of Babe's production clash worst in the play's first third--rendered almost entirely inaudible by poor sound on the film track and Michael Tschudin's silly music which underscores dialogue with all the precision of a dead organist slumped over his keyboard. But Babe's crowded battles, rendered more evocative than specific by bouncing light off shiny armour are, when best executed by Coriolanus's decidedly unconfident extras, unnervingly realistic and indicative of Babe's proclivity toward cinematic stage effect...
...mixed bag and the sum total of Babe's ideas can only bring us to Coriolanus. Babe opts-out of the traditional director's game of characterizing Coriolanus by motivating his inability to humble himself before the plebeians. Corresponding to his entire approach, Babe emphasizes diverse characteristics of the man as situations arise. Strongest seems a perverse sense of humor: Coriolanus smiles and waves goodbye when he leaves Rome, as if he were leaving for summer camp. Tom Jones is neither larger-than-life, like Olivier (Stratford, 1960), or rich and petulant, like Ian Richardson (Stratford, 1967), and relies heavily...