Hail, Coriolanus! The greatness of Shakespeare's shape-shifting epic

From Olivier's strangled fury to Ralph Fiennes' Oedipal embraces, this complex political play is extraordinarily flexible 'The tragedy of Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our author's performances." So wrote Dr Johnson - but I'm not sure that "amusing" is the word that leaps to mind when thinking of Shakespeare's play, which Robert Hastie is directing at the Crucible, Sheffield. With its intransigent hero, its struggles between Rome's patricians and plebeians and its austere language, it...