Angry voters. Corrupt leaders. Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ feels like a modern tragedy

KCRW sponsors include Hotel Figueroa, which is turning 100 this year. On August 28, they're hosting a roaring 20-themed centennial celebration featuring music, culinary, and libation experiences. Learn more at Hotel Figueroa.com. The Save America Pact, you paid you nearly $10 million between March of 2024 and December of 2024 to serve as the President Trump's personal defense attorney. My God, don't you not find there's any conflict of interest in what you are doing here as the acting attorney general of the United States? I didn't know. What are you saying as a conflict? I don't understand what you're saying. Connecticut Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLaro questioning Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche last month. Todd Blanche will appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow in his bid to officially become the Attorney General of the United States. It's expected to be a rocky hearing. Todd Blanche is a Trump loyalist. The Attorney General is supposed to be loyal just to the Constitution. As Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche defended the president in criminal cases, and he oversaw the attempt to establish a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who felt they were wronged by the legal system. That so-called anti-weaponization fund outraged both Democrats and Republicans, and it was eventually scuttled. The fund was initially established as part of a settlement between President Trump. Trump and the IRS, which Trump sued for releasing his tax returns. A judge ruled yesterday that that lawsuit was improper and that Todd Blanche was representing both parties. We're going to talk about Todd Blanche's confirmation now with our legal legal, Jessica Levinson, Professor Alibola Law School. Hello. Hello. Okay, so yesterday the judge in this case, whose court is in Southern Florida, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, found that Trump's lawsuit against the IRS was filed for, quote, improper purpose. What does that mean? It means that the Trump administration and President Trump were essentially colluding. And so what the judge found is that there was no... Case or controversy. Madeline, as you know, we talk a lot about how do you get to walk into a federal courthouse? One of the things you need is an actual conflict, not two parties who are in collusion who want to use the veneer of a judicial proceeding and then a settlement to say, Look what we got. So essentially what Judge Williams was saying is that the Trump administration and President Trump specifically sued almost sued himself because he is in charge of the IRS. He sued the IRS based on issues related to his first administration. At that point, the judge said there was no conflict between the parties. They basically made an agreement that

This was the reason that you should sue so that you could then settle, not bring that settlement to a judge and then say, well, There's no conflict anymore. We've mooted it out. And so she was saying it was an abuse of the judicial process. All right. So what does this mean, though? Because as I said, the settlement fund has been apparently decommissioned. So what does her ruling actually entail or what does it mean going forward? So it means with respect to the fund that that fund will not exist. As he said, it's decommissioned. It will never pay out any claims. The open question is whether or not another part of that settlement, which said that with respect to President Trump and his family, that the IRS could not audit them going forward if that part of the settlement still lives. Now, Todd Blanche has said that it does. Now, what it means for Todd Blanche, of course, is that this opens up a whole line of questioning in what you had already accurately described as a rocky confirmation hearing because he was, of course, the acting attorney general at the time that this case was brought. And he was the acting attorney general at the time that this settlement was effectuated. Right, and the judge also referred the lawyers behind the suit for possible disciplinary action. Does that include Todd Blanche? It does include Todd Blanche, and I don't think, frankly, that we should be numb to this. I know that it's something we talk about a good deal, but the idea that a federal judge is saying to lawyers, not you lose the case, not I think that you brought this case and you were too aggressive in your tactics, not I'm going to hold you in contempt, but I think the state bar should look into you because maybe you should not be a member of the profession anymore. Maybe you should face other disciplinary action. That still is extraordinary. And that does go back to what we were talking about before. The idea that bringing this case, I mean, I don't know how else to say it other than I think the judge thought it was a farce from the beginning to the end. And so this does include Todd Blanche. It includes other members of the Department of Justice. And we've seen this before. We saw this after the 2020 election where some of President Trump's lawyers. were in fact disbarred and were referred for disciplinary hearings.

Well, okay, speaking of hearings, the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee begins tomorrow. And as we just said, it's going to be a rocky one. And he can't, because of the death of South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham, he basically needs all the Republicans, the 10 remaining on the Judiciary Committee, to vote to confirm Todd Blanche. But he faces some headwinds in the form of Thom Tillis in South Carolina and John Cornyn in Texas. So what do you suspect will happen at the hearings tomorrow? What kinds of questions will Todd Blanche get? So unlike other hearings, I don't think that this is a done deal at all, in part because of what you just said, that Todd Blanche cannot lose one Republican vote. And if he does, then this dies in committee. So what are we going to hear about, in part what we've just been talking about, which is, of course, the deal to settle the Trump IRS lawsuit. I think we're also going to be hearing about investigations into President Trump's political enemies. Those are investigations that President Trump tried to push Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue. He was not as successful, excuse me, as he would have wanted to be. And so I think what we're going to hear is. Questions as to whether or not Todd Blanche would also take up cases against people like James Comey and Letitia James. I think we're also going to hear questions about January 6th. We've heard this before when Todd Blanche was sitting for his confirmation hearings to be the deputy attorney general, where he got... a number of questions about whether he thought those pardons were proper, whether he thought he should have been talked to about that, and whether or not there could be future pardons with respect to other political allies of the president. Right. Also, I'm sure the Epstein files will be brought up because people are still angry with how his predecessor, Pam Bondi, handled them. And also Todd Blanche, meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell during all of that controversy. So I'm sure he's going to be asked a lot of questions about that. anger over the Epstein files really crosses the line, the political line on both sides. Democrats and Republicans have a lot of anger and a lot of questions about that. So I guess he'll be asked about that. You're saying that his confirmation is not necessarily a slam dunk. And do you think that it'll be the Epstein files, the weaponization slush fund, the pardons, all of the above that could doom him?

I was about to say you didn't offer me all of the above. You're exactly right to bring up Jeffrey Epstein. And Democrats, we can absolutely bet we'll bring up Jeffrey Epstein because they have already said that some of their witnesses on Thursday would be victims and alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein. They're also going to bring an attorney who claims that she was wrongfully fired by Todd Blanche for essentially not following orders when it came to one. of President Trump's political allies and a pardon that they wanted to give that ally. With respect to Jeffrey Epstein, I think what we're going to hear is a lot about what Pam Bondi said after she was fired, which is basically Todd Blanche was the one in charge. He was the point person. And so that bungled rollout of the records, of the records that should have been redacted and weren't, the records where we saw pictures that we shouldn't have. That was all him. And I think you're going to hear Democrats pick up on that and say, if you couldn't even unredact information about victims of sexual assault and molestation, then how is it that you can run this department? Right. Okay. So in the meantime, though, he is running the department, and even if he doesn't make it out of committee, he could continue to run the department for how long? Well, this is something that's actually been litigated, as you know, because there's an issue of how long you can have these in-term or acting appointments. We've seen this litigated essentially up and down the state. Of course, we have an acting U.S. attorney in the central district right here in Los Angeles. We have a number of acting U.S. attorneys in... Florida in New York. And so there are statutes that deal with these in-term appointments. I would offer that I think they're being pushed. to the absolute boundary of what they might allow. And so everybody will notice, I'm using a lot of words to not answer your question, Madeline, because we know that these statutes have limits. It's you get 180 days, and then there's some question as to whether or not you can be re-upped. But I don't know where we are in terms of litigating those statutes and how long Todd Blanche could actually serve in an acting role. Our legal legal, Jessica Levinson, is a loyal law school professor. She joins us every week or almost every week here on the show with her analysis. Thank you so much. Thank you. Coming up, Israel has lost the Democratic Party. A speech by party stalwart, Rahm Emanuel, and Tel Aviv reveals how far the party has moved. That's next on Press Play.

KSRW sponsors include Hotel Figueroa. Step back in time and celebrate 100 years of Hotel Figueroa. On August 28th, downtown L.A.'s legendary hotel hosts a centennial birthday bash inspired by the Roaring 20s, featuring live entertainment, craft cocktails, and culinary experiences, including the Italian flavors of Florence by the water. Join them for an unforgettable evening to honor a century of style, culture, and hospitality. Learn more at Hotel Figueroa.com. This is press play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Madeline Brand. Last week, Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, former ambassador to Japan under President Biden, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, and current possible presidential candidate delivered a speech in Tel Aviv, where he said the U.S.-Israel alliance is at a crossroads and that something needs to change. The prime minister and his government have led Israel into a dead end. For too long, American policy towards Israel operated under the assumption that the best thing Washington did do for Jerusalem is to blindly, to silently stand behind your government without conditions, without demands, without consequences, even when we disagreed. That has been our mistake. Emmanuel's remarks by an establishment Democrat would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Unconditional support has allowed you to deny food and medical relief to innocent Palestinians in Gaza, leaving the world to conclude that Israelis not only want to kill Palestinians. but they are completely indifferent to their death, to their destruction, and completely indifferent to their suffering. My next guest says Rahm Emanuel's speech shows how Israel has lost the Democratic Party. Zach Beecham is a senior correspondent for Vox, where he wrote about what he calls the death of the pro-Israel Democrat. Welcome back to press play, Zach. Hey, happy to be back. Great to have you. All right. Well, this speech, let's be honest, is not going to change American foreign policy, at least not right now. So what was Rahm Emanuel doing giving this speech at Tel Aviv University? Well, you know, I think his principal goal is staking out a lane in the Democratic primary in 2008. Rahm Emanuel is widely rumored to be running in that contest. His chances are very low at present. I haven't seen any poll numbers indicating any kind of organic support. But Israel is one of those issues that is very high profile in the Democratic Party right now. It's a way of building an identity for yourself focusing on it. So one thing he can do is identify where he should. sit there but more to the point he is also identifying more people who are like him

should sit on this issue. Emmanuel has been very much positioning himself in the centrist lane. He's talked a lot about how Democrats focus too much on left-wing cultural ideas and how they should pull back to the center and work on pocketbook issues. He's denounced anti-capitalism in the Democratic Party. He's very much trying to build himself as the sensible, cultural, and economic moderate who can appeal to middle America. Whether or not you think that's plausible, you have to understand his foreign policy positioning in light of that choice. Emmanuel's speech on Israel was by the standards of just a few years ago, incredibly critical of the Israeli government and of the current setup of the U.S. Israel Alliance. By standards of today in the Democratic Party, Very much not. What he's saying is very normal. So by doing this, he's effectively making a statement that he believes the center of the Democratic Party or the even center right of the Democratic Party should be taking a stance that's highly critical of the current Israeli government and the current structure of the U.S. Israel relationship. That is a profound difference from where the old center was. It used to be the case where the sort of right... wing of the Democratic Party, the party centrists, were overwhelmingly pro-Israel. That was part and parcel of their identity. But that's just, that's not the case anymore. It's striking. Yeah. But there's a difference between being pro-Israel and being pro-Benjamin Netanyahu. pro-Israel and pro-Israeli government. And it's not that controversial to be anti Benjamin Netanyahu in the Democratic Party. Certainly President Obama had his problems with Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Hillary Clinton had her problems with Benjamin Netanyahu. Since then, his positions have gone even further to the right. His government is a far-right nationalist. organization at this point. And so most Democrats do not support Benjamin Netanyahu. I think he has in the single digits or maybe the teens in terms of support in the Democratic Party for Benjamin Netanyahu. So how was he actually giving a radical speech for a mainstream Democrat? It's all about your baseline and where you put it, right? So if you put the baseline at what was the case 20 years ago, what Emmanuel said is almost unthinkable. If you put the baseline at 10 years ago, it's pretty aggressive. Probably no one like Bernie, except Bernie Sanders was talking like this about 10 years ago. If you put the baseline at a few months ago, Emmanuel's speech is, as you say, very much in the Democratic mainstream. And all of this, by the way, is mirrored in public opinion. It's not just... that elite Democrats decided on their own, we need to move to the left of Israel, become more critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, or that we should have been pro-Israel in the past. It's that sentiment the Democratic Party was pro-Israel. I'm using pro-Israel as a shorthand here.

sympathetic to the Israeli narrative of the conflict, sympathetic to the government of Israel, and to sort of its positions on various different conflict issues. 20 years ago, the Democratic Party was very much a pro-Israel party. This was a bipartisan position in the Republican and Democratic parties. Ten years ago, the Democratic position on Israel started to wane, in part because of Benjamin Netanyahu's sort of aggressive intervention in U.S. domestic policy, well, excuse me, U.S. foreign policy. sort of efforts, domestic policy in part, right? It was very clear he favored the Republicans and was pushing for a Republican victory in 2012. And was anti the Iranian nuclear deal under President Obama. That's right. That was the big thing, right? He gave a speech in Congress lobbying against it openly, which was a really unprecedented involvement from a foreign leader in a decision made by the U.S. Congress. So Democrats were angry then, but really the Gaza War has transformed. Everything. I think it's hard to say exactly when the decline started because this has been so gradual Democrats breaking up with at least the U.S. Israel Alliance and the current Israeli government. But it seems like all of those trends that had been pushed forward by Benjamin Netanyahu by Israel's decision to double down on colonization and occupation of the West Bank. They came to a head when Israel engaged in a campaign that I think by any reasonable definition was... defined by war crimes and that many people have now come to regard to genocide, including in the Democratic Party, by the way. A majority of Democrats in a recent poll said that what happened in Gaza was genocide. It's a slim majority, 52%, but still a majority. And the idea that Israel was committing genocide, I mean, that would have been unthinkable in Democratic Party politics prior to 2023. It wasn't very popular in 2024. Really took... two years of the conflict until 2025, roughly two years, a little bit under, for that to start to become a really prominent narrative among Democrats. So the war and the nature of it sort of, it crystallized a long-running trend among both elected and rank-and-file Democrats, but it also, in and of itself, right, Israel's conduct during the war was so shattering. And so obviously indefensible to many people in the Democratic Party that it forced a restructuring, a complete restructuring of where U.S. politics would be on this issue, even though the Biden administration didn't show it on power. Right. So the Biden administration basically gave Israel money no strings attached during the war. Now, Rahm Emanuel is saying no more unconditional money for Israel, which is, as you say, a big shift for mainstream Democrats. What else does he want that's a big change from where the party was? So one of the other notable proposals in his speech is sanctions, right? So now the Biden administration did push for some sanctions. It was very limited and the Trump administration reversed it on violent settlers and some of their enablers in the West Bank. But Emmanuel's proposal would go quite a bit further. If I understand it, and again, his language was sort of vague. This wasn't a policy detailed speech. It was sort of the broad out ones of a new policy.

He would sanction Israeli leaders who play some role in supporting what is, I think, widely regarded as terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers living there. And that could include very high-ranking members of the current government. There are two very obvious examples here, which would be the head of the National Security Ministry, it's Omar Itamar Ben-Gvir and the head of the finance ministry, Betzel Smotrich. Itamar Ben-Gvir is in charge of the national police. Smotrich has a major role in running West Bank policy. Both of them have been instrumental in the rise, this has been going on for a while, but the recent rise of West Bank terrorism. its impunity, right? The official decision by the Israeli government to ignore this even as it gets worse and worse. This has become a very controversial issue in domestic Israeli politics, where, you know, calling for a two-state solution has become much less popular than it once was, but Israelis are still quite shocked by what's happening. Many are shocked by what's happening in the West Bank. They see it as going too far, even by their current standards. And so it certainly positions Emmanuel on one side. of the internal Israeli political debate. But it also puts him on that spectrum, which I think is interesting, right? Because there are now voices in the Democratic Party or in the broader left that had no purchase before who deny the legitimacy of Israel as a... Jewish state altogether, right, who argue that the best solution to the conflict is the dissolution of Israel as we know it and its replacement with a binational, binational, includes the Palestinian territories and what's currently Israel under one banner. That view is still at the left margins of the party, but it is now in there, right? And that view, I think, can properly be characterized as outright anti-Israel, because it favors the end of Israel as in its current political... entity or identity, Emmanuel wants to say the center of the Democratic Party cannot go that far. He wants to position himself with sort of the beleaguered Jewish left in Israel, of which there are a few remaining. But in that, he has a sort of notable ally, which is not just other Democrats, but also the lobby J Street, which was founded in 2008 as a sort of left-wing counterpoint to A-PAC, which is the pro-Israel lobby. And their position has always been pro-Israel, pro-peace. Right, sort of the tagline, the way they define themselves. And in 2008, J Street was sort of the left edge of what was permissible or what was acceptable or what was being said in mainstream democratic politics. And now, you know, I spoke to their policy director and vice president, Elon Musk Goldenberg, and he told me that Emmanuel's speech, which was very, he had very, some ideas that were extremely similar, like even using the same language as J Street policy proposals, but was still, you know, a bit, a few shades to the right of them. He said that he agreed with about 80 to 90%.

of what Emmanuel said, but also said that that is now the right edge of what can be said in democratic politics. Like that's the manual speech, I should say. It's the right-wing position by internal Democratic Party standards, which is, again, a truly remarkable shift for an organization that was... not only controversial in Democrats, but controversial among Jewish organizations, right, when it was founded. It was often not included or permitted to be involved in intercommunal meetings between different organizations. So for J-Sphere to find itself as being backed by Emanuel, who used to be not the most right-wing Democrat on Israel, but certainly not left-wing either by any stretch of the imagination, really signals a sea change in... the party's discussion of the issues and a potential major policy change for the United States if Democrats win the 2028 presidential election. Right. So that could mean the end of the no strings attached military or just aid in general to Israel. But that is something that Benjamin Netanyahu is already calling for. He doesn't want that anymore, at least publicly he's been saying, I'm sure he would take it if it was offered, but he's saying Israel will be perfectly fine without United States aid or at least with lesser United States aid. So. How big a policy change do you expect the United States to take when it comes to Israel, even if, even during the current administration and with Republicans, because they too are getting a little fed up with Benjamin Netanyahu and with just the sort of billions of dollars of unrestricted aid that Israel has been receiving? You know, it's really fascinating. Israel is this issue that divides both of the parties internally, but it does so in kind of different ways, right? Where the Democratic debate is over basically just how far we should go to punish the Israeli government. The Republican internal debate is over whether we should be aligned with the current Israeli government or basically... get ourselves out, not be involved at all in the situation whatsoever. So if Democrats are between two different ways of trying to push the region in different directions, Republicans are about basically isolationism and sort of not not be involved in the Middle East or going full tilt in support of the current Israeli government's visions and priorities. Those are the sort of two major. distinctions in Republican, mainstream politics, policy experts as a whole range of opinions. But I'd say that's the big divide. And the pro-Israel camp is in the driver's seat right now, not just because of Trump. Trump is more curial. He can change his mind whenever, but in terms of the sort of balance of forces and positions of power.

Right. And if you look at the Republican congressional delegation, it's so overwhelmingly pro-Israel. If you look at activist organizations that have large memberships in the GOP, you know, things like Christians United for Israel, which is a Christian Zionist, the Christian Zionist organization, is extremely powerful. Many major Republican donors are very pro-Israel. Not just Jewish donors. I want to be clear, right? It's also Christian donors. And in the right, it's much more so, actually, Christian Zionists who drive the pro-Israel stance than Jewish Republicans. And so it's sort of they have the power. They have the they have the numbers, right, in polls that shows the Republicans still remain a much more pro-Israel party than Democrats. The slippage when you find it is among young Republicans primarily. And they're being driven in part or following along with or maybe. they are driving in some ways, online influencers, people like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes, all of whom are unfortunately wrapped their critique of Israel in some pretty obviously anti-Semitic clothing. But these folks are really coming to speak for young Republicans who see the U.S. alliance with Israel as not part of the America first package. Basically, what does America get out of backing this country? And so the question is- But that's something you're on the left, too, right? With like a candidate like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, he's saying the same thing. Like, why are we sending money there and this money could be used to repair roads here or help kids here? Absolutely. Much of the rhetoric is in common between the two sort of most aggressively critical camps in both parties. What's different is the driving motivation. On the right, It's mostly about America. It's we don't really want to be involved in this. This is not what we are about. We don't care about this. On the left, it's very much about Palestinian human rights, right, that is motivating the political stance. It's saying we should be involved and we should be involved to push for justice, not to push against what they see as a just settlement of conflict. What's interesting is Rahm Emanuel doesn't really mention the Palestinians much in his speech in terms of having self-determination he calls for. the Arab League to sweep in and basically bring the Palestinians to heal to approve some kind of two-state solution. I wouldn't quite put it that way, right? The idea, I think they're more with what he calls the 23-state solution, is to bring in Arab nations as kind of guarantors from the Israeli point of view. Because right now, the Israeli society is extremely skeptical of any kind of... two-state solution by bringing in a broader normalization package with broader Arab countries. The idea is not only to provide funding for Palestine reconstruction and state building, but also to to to to to Give Israelis more, give them a carrot to go along with any sticks the U.S. might be offering. So you get this really, really valuable thing of maintaining or really creating diplomatic relations with a lot of Arab countries that you didn't have them with previously. So it's not quite about strong-arming the Palestinians, but I agree with your broader point, right, which is that if you read the speech, there's very little interest in the Palestinian narrative. It's mostly what you're doing is bad for Palestinians, but it's not that Palestinians themselves have...

much to say about it in the way he puts that, right? Well, you know, I've talked to policy experts on sort of the left of the Democratic Party about the speech. And this is the thing they've really zeroed in on. Emmanuel describes the failure of the two-state solution negotiations in the 90s and 2000s as the result of Palestinian rejectionism basically entirely. Views... on that range pretty dramatically among historical experts. And there's a sort of live debate over exactly how to apportion blame. But the general view, I think among left-leaning policy experts, is Emmanuel went way too far and only assigning blame to the Palestinians and not focusing on the role that the United States played or that Israel played in the failure of those talks. And I think in general it just sort of is an Israel-centric. worldview. That's the term that was used to me by one of these experts, right? It's one in which what matters is the decisions that are made in Tel Aviv in Jerusalem. And Ramallah sort of like follows on or is a result of that and is not really in a position to be making demands, right? Everything runs through the Israeli government. We don't even think about the Palestinians as actors with agencies unless it's to blow up what the Israelis want. Which is, I think, a very... blinkered way. of looking at the conflict. Pretty much any expert will tell you that's the case. Even right-leaning ones will say, I know the Palestinians are much more involved in that than that they have real agency. It's just they've used it in bad ways. They might agree with Emmanuel's characterization of the peace talks and push it further. Like I said, huge range of opinion on these topics. But yes, I think that's what makes it when I said earlier that that's now the right flank of Democratic Party discourse. I think that's exactly why. Because it's much more interested in Israel, qua sort of Israel. than anything about the Palestinians, their rights to self-determination or their peoplehood. Well, Zach, thank you so much. Oh, yeah, happy to be here. This is great. Yeah, really great. Zach Beecham, senior correspondent at Fox.

In Griffith Park, you can see the Shakespearean tragedy, Coriolanus, a 400-year-old play not often performed, but the director found the conflict between angry citizens and arrogant leaders relevant to today. There were some lines that some other citizens speak that really could have been spoken on the floor of Congress or even outside Congress. That just seemed so immediate to me. Coriolanus next on Press Play. This is Press Play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. That's a scene from Shakespeare's tragedy, Coriolanus. It's now being performed in Griffith Park's free Shakespeare Festival. The play begins in the early days of the Roman Republic. The people are rioting, fed up with the elites. Coriolanus is a war hero. And upon his return to Rome, he's pushed by the elites to run for office. He's a great soldier. But a lousy politician who can't hide his contempt for the common folk. They turn against him and banish him from Rome. Coriolanus then teams up with his former enemy to attack his own city-state. He drops the plan after his mother pleads for mercy and then... He is killed by his former enemy. My guest now is the director of Coriolanus David Melville. He's also the co-founder of the Independent Shakespeare Company, which has staged Free Shakespeare in Griffith Park for around two decades. Hello, two decades. Wow, congratulations. Hello, Madeline. That's incredible. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I can't believe it's been two decades. I know, because I took my kids when they were really little when you moved to Griffith Park from Barnstall, and now they're college graduates, so time has marched on. It has a habit of doing that. Okay, well, here's what's interesting, is this play that Shakespeare wrote, speaking of time, was written around 1608, and yet it seems remarkably contemporary, as is practically every Shakespeare play. But why did you decide to stage this? Because it's not often stage, and it's pretty difficult to do, as I understand. Yes, I think it's got a reputation as being quite a challenging play. I've seen a couple of really good productions. I teach this class. I teach a scene study class. And I normally pick plays like Twelfth Night or things that I think they're going to be familiar with. And my students revolted and they asked to do Coriolanus. And I said, well, okay, we can work on that. But I'm going to set you a challenge. Your challenge is to convince me that this play is worth producing. And they won. How did they do that? How do they convince you?

Well, we picked the scenes we wanted to do, and they were really good in them, but I just realized there's so many great dramatic scenes in it, especially the scenes with his mother. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of politics in the play, but at the heart of it, there's this family dynamic, which is very productive, but highly dysfunctional, which is very juicy dramatically. So I was really drawn to that. Yeah, so the mother, describe her. She's quite fearsome and she's played by your wife as it happens. And just as an aside. And so describe her and their relationship. Well, she just wants the best for her son, really, but she's quite a dominating force. And she's brought him up to be really quite bloodthirsty. And he's a... brutal warrior and you know he knows no second on the on the battlefield um and she's she's brought him up with a code of honor and ethics that he adhered to to the letter uh but she's made him almost too efficient really um and she's not brought him up with any kind of maternal love i mean she's more of a father really um And so this dynamic sort of has created... a man who doesn't know how to accept praise or be in the world or compromise, which makes him a spectacularly ill-equipped politician. Yeah, and she would rather that he die in military glory than be kind of a nothing, right? Yes, she revels in the wounds that he comes home with. And in the first half, there's quite a sort of dramatic battle sequence where he's locked into Corioli. and he beats them all single-handedly and comes out covered in blood and single-handedly turns around this victory for Rome, which at the time is a city-state. It's not the whole of Italy. It's fighting other city-states in Rome. He comes back and he's covered in wounds, and she's thrilled, and of course his wife is horrified. Right. She's not into the war-mongering. No. Well, so the play also seems pretty relevant because you've got an angry electorate. Many people are angry because they can't buy food. Prices have gone up. There's a scarcity of food. Yes, there's inflation. And they're being led by arrogant and manipulative leaders. So is that also a reason why you thought, huh, maybe I should stage it now? It seems pretty relevant. Yes. I mean, there are some lines that some of the citizens speak that really could have been spoken on the floor of Congress or even outside Congress. That just seemed so immediate to me. that it was worth doing. So yes, there's a lot there. But it's an interesting play in that it doesn't really have... At the end of the day, you still don't quite know who to root for. The tribunes rise at the beginning of the play and that the people are given some kind of representation, but they very quickly...

start pursuing their own agendas and become quite corrupt and make terrible decisions for the people, which end up with Coriolanus about to ransack the city and slaughter them all. And they overturn an election. So in the middle of the play, there's one of my favorite lines in the plays, will we dismiss the will of the people? And that has so many kind of echoes of January 6th. And what is quite sort of... fascinating with the production every night is how the audience responds to that and starts to chime in and becomes a character in their own right. Well, you also encourage the audience to participate. Yeah, yeah. We sort of open the door for that, but sometimes they just run with it, you know? They barge and run through the Capitol. And it's interesting how they, you know, sometimes they're rooting for Coriolanus, and sometimes they're rooting for the tribunes and the people, and they vacillate between the two sometimes. I mean, it's interesting having conversations with people afterwards about how... how surprising it is and how easily led a group of people can be. I know this is just a theater audience, but at the same time, it's kind of a social experiment, so it's quite interesting. So in each night, do you try to tilt it a little bit and see if you can bring out more of the elite or more of the common folk? The natural inclination right from the get-go is to side with the plebeians. Right. And that's kind of the challenge of the play. Yeah, exactly. It's a very kind of socialist world that we're in anyway, with a small S. But the challenge of the play, I think, is to present a Coriolanus that can in some way appeal to people. I mean, he's got a lot of very unappealing characteristics. And maybe this is why the play isn't produced that much. But I think if you have a great actor who's got a lot of... charm, personal charm, which we have in Brent Charles, that can really make it interesting because I think that, you know, he does have some redeeming qualities. I mean, he refuses to be flattered and he really sticks to his integrity and he doesn't compromise and, you know, he doesn't equivocate. And I, there aren't very many politicians these days that one could say that about. Yeah. And you do feel for him at the end when he knows that if he accedes to his mother's demand to call off the sacking of Rome, it is his doom that he will be killed. Yes, absolutely. His sealing is his own fate by doing that. And, you know, it's interesting in all of this. It is a play about politics, but it's the family dynamic that saves everything. It's his mother stepping in.

But throughout the ages, historical figures have seen it as an endorsement of their political points of view, most notably, Hitler, as I understand it. Yes, he was fond of this play. And as I understand it, the Allied forces, when they came to liberate Germany, they banned the play from being performed. Did they really? I didn't know that. Oh, that's fascinating. It was actually Bertolt Brecht. It was his favorite... His favorite play by Shakespeare. I think it was easy for him to push a socialist message in it. I mean, there's a strong sort of authoritarian line, but there's a very strong socialist line, which obviously appealed to him. And I think if you bend the production in either of those directions, yes, you can make it mean that. But that's not really what Shakespeare wrote, I don't think. And I think Shakespeare leaves us actually... with a rather uncomfortable ending where there are no, there's no cute answers in this play. There's only more questions and more conversation. So I think sometimes... That's interesting. So what was happening in Shakespeare's England? Was he taking cues from the political situation in England in 60. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is during the reign of James I first when... Parliament was starting to clash with the king over the idea of the king having sort of absolute power, and the Parliament wanted more power. And it's 30 years away from the country descending into a brutal civil war, which was being fought over this. So, you know, this was the beginning of that. There was food scarcity at that time. And... people were being accused of hoarding grain in order to drive up prices. And rather embarrassingly, one of the people who were fine for this was actually William Shakespeare. I don't know if it was him personally, but someone on his estate was hoarding grain so they could jack up the prices, which is exactly the argument that the plebeians are making at the beginning of the play. So there were riots in the Midlands. And, you know, there was, you know, you were never very far away from a riot in London with the, you know, the apprentices and everything. So he was definitely tapping into something that was... you know, that was emerging then. And, you know, it blew up into the Civil War. And by the end of the Civil War, I mean, that, you know, that changed British society forever. Huh. Gosh. So when you look at that history and this play, are you seeing any kind of foreshadowing, possible foreshadowing as to what could happen here? Well, Madeline, I'm only a theater director. It could or could not. Who knows? That's true. I think that's, yes. I mean, I think there's a lot that one can take away from it. At least I think it should send you away asking some questions. I think it's interesting to see a political conflict like this that has a lot of corollaries to our current...

day. But at the same time, you know, there are things that are very different. But to see it from a different perspective and to ask yourself questions about where you would sit in all of that, I think that's a valuable thing. But yes, gosh, where are things going? I mean, Coriolanus is a leader who refuses to be flattered. I think we have a leader currently who does, who's the opposite of that. That's true. Flattery goes a long way. So speaking of, apparently, Steve Bannon, I don't know if you know this, wrote a hip-hop musical which reinterpreted the story of Cori Linus. No, I didn't know that. Oh, my God. Yeah, it never was produced. But apparently he tried to split the difference. And his Coriolanus is the idea is a violent macho. He sees it as this violent macho conflict to purge the corrupt leader. So the leaders are purged. But then that paves the way for a new authoritarian leader to emerge. That's his version of it. Set amongst the gangs of Los Angeles. Oh. Well, that seems kind of prescient, doesn't it? Oh my God. Strangely, it was never produced. We put a lot of music into this show. We introduce each scene so that we can keep, you know, the locations clear because it really does shift around a lot. We came up with this idea that the actors in the play would announce it with this kind of heavy metal. music, you know, 30 seconds stings that give it a lot of energy. And it made me think, well, we could take some of these and turn it into a hip-hop musical about Coriolanus. It would be a great hip-hop musical, but I didn't know it had an organ done. Exactly. You'd be plagiarizing Steve Hannan. Maybe I can get the rights for it. You're a pretty funny guy. I've been watching you on stage for a long time. And there's a lot of comedy in this, even though it is a tragedy. So how do you think about staging tragedies with the little comedic touches? One of the things I say from the get-go is the characters in a tragedy don't know they're in a tragedy. The tragedy doesn't occur in Shakespeare until Act 5. Chekhov said, in order to make an audience cry, you have to make them laugh first. And I think laughter is a good way of relaxing an audience and making them feel that it's comfortable. And there's a reason to want to continue to listen. And then once that guard is down, then they're actually much more open and receptive to the more emotional beats in it. But I think that... There are some dramatic ironies in the language, which are very clearly intentional jokes from Shakespeare. And I think if you're, you know, if you just relax and let it happen, it's great. And there should be a mix of darkness and lightness in these plays. You know, I'm always so pleased if the laughter is coming from actual lines that Shakespeare's written.

occurring clearly to the audience. When Menenius at the end of the play, he says there's no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger, which is such a great image. And it is funny, but it's clear, and it very aptly describes the situation. It's just beautifully written. So you began, give me a little history of your production company, the Independent Shakespeare Company. which you call indie shakes now it began in new york in 1998 melissa and i met on a production of Hamlet that was starring Ray Fines. And then we started producing our own plays, little plays in New York. And then when we found out we were going to have a baby, we decided we should get serious. We moved to L.A. And I think we were kind of quitting acting. And I got a job as a waiter. And that lasted for about six months. And we just started producing theatre again, which I know was kind of silly or not very prudent. And then a sort of year or two later, we found this place in a park. We thought, why don't we just do it outdoors? And if we make it free, we'll see what happens. And as soon as we made it a free festival, we were playing to, you know, 10 times the number of people when we were in those little indoor theaters. And then just kind of grew from that. And in the last 10 years or so, we've been working with the city to build a permanent home, which is now under construction. And if all goes according to plan, it should open next summer. So you will have your own permanent stage in... Griffith Park. Yeah. Incredible. I know. It'll be a dream come true. Now we can build much bigger sets and we can light from overhead. Where we are right now in this temporary space, there's no electricity, so everything is off grid. So it's quite a feat making it happen up there, but it'll be really nice to get into this new space. Oh, my gosh. Well, congratulations. Do you envision it becoming as big as the Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in New York? Well, one can dream, can't one. Does one? I mean, I... I don't know. I don't think I would like it to lose the great kind of community feel that it has. With a new space, people are still going to bring picnic blankets and spread out on the lawn. And I think it's quite hard to get a ticket for the one in New York to queue up and do all sorts of, you know, I have to jump through a lot of hoops to do it. And I really, I would prefer not to have that happen. Right.

I would love it to have the reach that that has. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Madeline. This has been wonderful. David Melville is director of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, which is running in Griffith Park until July 26th. It's free. So go check it out.