Coriolanus, directed for the screen by Barry Avrich, is the latest event cinema offering from the Stratford Festival, which, under the leadership of Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino and Executive Director Anita Gaffney, plans to capture all of Shakespeare’s plays on film.

Staged at the Stratford Festival and named on many 2018 year-end critics “best of” lists, the Stratford Festival’s “riveting” and “exhilarating” (The New York Times) production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, has been called “the show of the decade… a landmark production for the Stratford Festival.  Maybe for William Shakespeare, too” (The Globe and Mail), and “the greatest contemporary staging of this play that I have ever seen” (Chicago Tribune).

The production is directed by genre-defying theatre artist Robert Lepage and stars André Sills, “a magnetic and imposing actor” (The New York Times), with a stellar cast delivering “performances that send shivers down the spine” (The Globe and Mail).

Lepage takes the story of the rise and fall of a legendary general who must face off against the angry Roman mob and infuses it with the energy of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring.

“By resetting dialogue-heavy scenes as talk radio gabfests, and representing the uninformed mob as anonymous voices on social media, Robert Lepage helps clarify Shakespeare’s portrait of a world, like ours, overwhelmed with insincerity” (The New York Times).  He “wrangles a difficult play into a heart-stopping narrative” (Chicago Tribune), “rendering a clear and cinematic version that’s riveting, invigorating and smart” (The Globe and Mail). “Rarely has Lepage’s reputation as a cinematic theatremaker been more earned” (Toronto Star)