Ian McKellen had played Tullus
Aufidius in a production directed Tyrone Guthrie in 1963/64 prior to being invited
to play Coriolanus by Peter Hall at the Royal National Theatre in 1984. McKellen
was at odds with some of Hall's concepts, notably the device of having about
thirty audience members sit on the stage and respond to the action. "This
they either totally failed to do," wrote McKellen, "blocking my first
entrance, for example, too nervous to interfere by shifting their ground so
the arrogant Caius Martius had to walk ignominiously round them – or they
jolined in too enthusiastically, waving or chatting amongst themselves at inappropriate
moments." Despite this disagreement, McKellen and Hall worked harmoniously
together and McKellen won the Evening Standard Award for his dynamic performance,
later taking the production to the Acropolis at the Herodus Atticus Theatre
in Athens. Jack Kroll wrote in Newsweek "McKellen’s Coriolanus is
a hero who poisons his heroism with his lack of human contact. Such heroes leave
a vacuum into which the final inhuman disaster may rush.”