Worse, the production can’t seem to decide whether it believes in melodrama or camp. I love interpretations that relish fully and sincerely the melodrama of the Renaissance stage and I also like more ironic, playful efforts. The RSC seems to go for the direct approach — the shrill music, elaborate swordplay and the top-of-the-lungs shouting, for instance, try and fail to stir emotion. But most of the laughs (and we did laugh often) were achieved against the grain of the text, with actors hamming up lines ridiculously or winking at the pomposity we are at other times expected to admire.

Further,the production is bereft of any political or historical imagination. Far from being faithful to Shakespeare, this brainless approach makes the play almost unwatchable. In 1608, the audience would have responded emotionally to conflict between starving peasants and threatened aristocrats and would have been interested in Corialanus as a man similar to the traitorous celebrity war hero Raleigh. Without this or any other political context, the action is tedious — a brute in conflict with knaves.

Finally, William Houston as Coriolanus is spastic and unpleasant. He struts like those fellows at the gym who have spent too much time working on their pecs. Judging from his physique, I suspect this is because he has spent too much time at the gym working on his pecs. Like the production as a whole, he is overdeveloped to the point of deformity.