Coriolanus

“It lends itself to a kind of anonymous dystopian military setting — not for nothing was President’s Snow’s middle name Coriolanus in The Hunger Games. Director Jim Guedo has chosen just such a setting, and has done so brilliantly. His staging is the star of the show.

He has taken a small company (15) and choreographed them so that they take on the multiple roles of the text seamlessly. The switching of personas and sometimes sides becomes part of the stagecraft, beautifully executed, and it was always clear to the audience who is who and what is what — no mean feat in this play.

The martial characters and the populous are dressed in ambiguous battle fatigues by costume designer Hannah Matiachuk. The fighting — and there is quite a lot — is equally stylized, fought with long sticks in a martial arts manner. The music and sounds — electronic and drumming — heighten the tension and support the whole staging (Guedo himself was the sound designer).

The result is compelling: a breathtakingly fast, hard-hitting two hours of brittle Shakespeare for our times.”

- The Edmonton Journal, 2015