Into the garden of delights that New York has lately become – pretty orange curtains in the park, cute spelling bee musical, charming documentary about porn – “Coriolanus” descends like a black granite slab. Shakespeare’s tragedy may not match the cosmic nihilism of “King Lear,” but the story of a noble general’s destruction is cynical enough, and timely enough, to appall even the most jaded reader of the daily news.

The play, now mounted by Theater for a New Audience, is overwhelmingly about politics – in approximately the way that “Disney Wars” is a primer on good boardroom behavior. Caius Martius (Christian Camargo) returns victorious from battle against the hated Volscians, sporting the nom de guerre Coriolanus. Will he be consul and rule Rome? The nobles, like Menenius (Jonathan Fried), support him; the conniving tribunes – the representatives of the people – stand against. All Coriolanus must do is bow down before the raucous public.

Yet the proud general is absolute. He has never shaken a hand or kissed a baby, and isn’t about to start just because the wavering, cowardly, unwashed suddenly demand it. Director Karin Coonrod offers a credible treatment of the man’s brief rise and sudden fall, if a lackluster one. The austerity is partly by design: You do not surround a stage with three towering, slateish walls and stick to white lights by accident. Her production doesn’t abound in visual treats (all the actors are uniformed in what looks like high-end denim) or visceral thrills (the occasional fights and bloody deaths tend to fall flat).

But the show’s spare, declamatory style suits a play obsessed with speech. Some form of the word “voice” is used more than 40 times in the text. Nearly every scene depicts somebody (or -bodies) trying to convince somebody or (-bodies) else to fall in line. Argument, demagoguery, emotionalism: Every trick in the book gets tried, and if fifth-century Rome had a race card, somebody would play that, too.

John Conklin’s scenery – tall walls, a few utilitarian pieces of furniture – gives Ms. Coonrod’s cast what the generals call a force multiplier: The actors’ voices boom throughout the John Jay College theater. The sounding board’s chief beneficiary is Mr. Camargo. Lanky and youthful, he emphasizes the general’s immaturity – his boyishness. Because he doesn’t find the role’s comedy (for all his pride and rage, Coriolanus has an exquisitely sardonic sense of humor), he makes the character seem merely petulant, awkward: a kind of warrior savant. But Mr. Camargo does have a rich, dynamic voice, which makes his speeches a pleasure to hear.

A certain flatness afflicts many of the performers – the charismatic Teagle F. Bougere and Matthew Maher being two notable exceptions. Roberta Maxwell, usually first-rate, makes Coriolanus’s mother seem too meek. After all, Volumnia is tough, crafty: She tries to show her son that politics is war by other means. The boy also reminds her that she used to boast, “If you had been the wife of Hercules, / Six of his labours you’d have done, and saved / Your husband so much sweat.” Like the actresses playing Coriolanus’s wife and her friend, she is oddly decorous for such a highly charged play.

Ms. Coonrod’s show captivates here and there. When Coriolanus is banished, and presents himself to his arch-enemy Tullus Aufidius (Mr. Bougere), the tension crackles. (This is extraordinary writing, but also a sign that both actors have been doing something right.) Other directorial moves look like directorial moves. In a play about voices, why are the actors scrawling graffiti – written as opposed to spoken messages – all over the walls? More than once I felt nostalgic for a “Coriolanus” staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2003: Director David Farr used the audience as the mob, a gesture that made the show both more elegant and more exciting.

The only fully realized performance comes from Mr. Fried. If you made it to Williamstown last summer, or have caught him in a string of engagements here in town, you know he possesses one of the richest voices in the business, plus formidable stage presence, plus a winking sense of comedy. All of these are put to use as Menenius. The wily senator loves Coriolanus like a son and fancies himself wise to the ways of the world. Yet near the end of the play, Menenius tries to convince the general not to invade Rome, and is spurned for his trouble. Mr. Fried didn’t quite earn the waterworks he supplied at that moment, but here, as in some other places, he seems to be trying to lend liveliness to a show that sorely needs it. Even when his moves didn’t quite work, I admired the effort; I hope in his next show he won’t need to try.

It is presumably because Ms. Coonrod wanted to give Menenius a deflated, Falstaffian final exit that she cut some subsequent lines. I’m all for judicious editing – just about anywhere, just about anytime – but in this case the cut wreaks some havoc on the play’s symmetry. Even with the last twist in the relationship between the Roman people and their leaders removed, Ms. Coonrod’s production leaves us with plenty to ponder – and to fear.

There aren’t many good guys in this play, no positive alternatives. Aufidius’s jocular servants talk about war, and how much they prefer it to peace. The Roman hoi polloi tend to be easily duped and unruly. Their leaders are no better. This isn’t a tragedy because a man who deserved power didn’t get it. If Coriolanus meant what he said, the best anyone could have hoped is that his would have been a benevolent dictatorship. The play explores many varieties of political mischief: Is his autocrazy better or worse than the other options? “The deeds of Coriolanus / Should not be utter’d feebly.” One of the general’s champions says that in the play. His detractors, the ones worried about power and its abuses, might say the same.

Until March 5 (Gerald W. Lynch Theater, 899 Tenth Avenue, between 58th and 59th Streets, 212-279-4200).