Readers pondering the blood-boltered figure staring from the recent full-page ads in their papers, might have wondered whether the Royal Shakespeare Company was having a second run of the Scottish play as its farewell to its principal theatre, that red-brick Avonside pile closing at the end of March for major refurbishment.

No, it is the face of William Houston as Coriolanus, the unbending warrior who is the central figure in Shakespeare's most overtly political and most impenetrably even-handed work. Coriolanus may be its focus - onstage much of the time, feared and spoken of when absent - but can we call him its hero?

He's a man of integrity and honour, who speaks his mind, has no personal ambition and is incapable of compromise. He is also, and fatally, an example of what E.M.Forster called "the undeveloped heart". His life - by birth and upbringing - rests on unchallenged hierarchy. He belongs to a stark tradition which equates military prowess with right to rule. The prowess is shown in the battle which he wins almost literally single-handed. The right to rule' is challenged when (through pressure of family and friends, not his own) he stands for consular power and fails totally to heed any basic human understanding.

The citizens want him to address them "kindly"; the senators ask him to speak "mildly". He can't, and the mob which cheered him into Rome now whoops' him into banishment and betrayal, egged on by the self-seeking tribunes (Fred Ridgeway and Darren Tunstall), the "tritons of the minnows". On one hand, is the peril of split authority; on the other the unanswerable question: "What is the city but the people?"

Nowhere else does Shakespeare speak so clearly, yet so bafflingly, on governance. Gregory Doran's production is unsparing. Richard Hudson's set of portals and columns are smudged with blood-red. The Roman costumes, soldiers, senators, plebs and patricians all, have shades of red, scarlet, flame, crimson. (The Volscians wear grey.) Terry King's fights are protracted and violent.

Houston, right hand clenched near his sword, is a serviceable Coriolanus - I find his fey half-smile unsuited to the part, and he's at his best in the Senate showdown. Some voices, like Michael Hadley's Cominius, are too subdued; even Janet Suzman's Volumnia, placed too far upstage, loses some of her great speech, though her hints of regret at the cost of war and peace are very moving. Timothy West's excellent Menenius is quiet too, but deeply authoritative even as his attempts as mediation fail.

At the last, Coriolanus and Aufidius lie alone onstage, victor and vanquished, steeped equally in blood. A harsh close to an uncompromising play.

Coriolanus continues at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until March 31. Box offfice: 0870 609 1110 (www.rsc.org.uk).