In troth, there's wondrous things spoke of him – Coriolanus Review

I’m a huge Shakespeare fan. I’ve seen performances at the Royal Exchange, at the RSC in Stratford and literally squealed with delight when Black Milk produced Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet manuscript leggings (more please!)

When it came to my attention via the Guardian that the Donmar Warehouse was staging a production of Coriolanus starring Tom Hiddleston, Deborah Findlay & Mark Gatiss as part of a starry ensemble, I immediately tried to get tickets. Predictably it was sold out, but thanks to a new scheme – Barclays Front Row – limited front row tickets were available at a reduced price of £10 every week for future performances.

The Donmar is a space not too dissimilar to the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Intimate and small, it has the feel of the studio space you find in many large theatres today. Our seats were so close to the stage my friend and I could (and did) pop our feet up onto it.

I’d heard tales of fangirls filming and giggling through the performances but lucky for us, we seemed to have landed a good crowd, there to appreciate the Shakespeare and quality of the cast as a whole rather than fluster themselves over a single actor.

As with other Shakespearian Roman epics, I expected blood, guts, drama and big battles. With a bare stage, a brick wall and a lone ladder leading to the rafters, I was intrigued to see how Josie Rourke’s production would stand up to the last Shakespeare I had seen in minimal settings – the Manchester International Festival production of Macbeth, staged in abandoned churched with the audience sat in pews.

The brick wall is used to great effect providing a canvas for graffiti and castle walls to be scaled. The play is neither set in a contemporary era nor original Shakespearean, the costumes muted shades of grey, green, violet and black. The battle scenes, skilfully using the chairs on stage and explosions of fire, debris and smoke, provided a suitably convincing impression of a castle under siege. I also picked up that several aspects of the play had been cut and blow me, were those lines from other plays being slipped in? Whilst I understand a need to appeal a modern audience and crunch down the running time to fit in multiple performances, it did pain me a little and the play was a little worse for it.

We are first introduced to Caius Martius as a true war hero, resistant to bribery and a glorious victor for Rome but after he is bestowed his new title, Coriolanus, came the inevitable shower scene that had be banded about on the internet. My initial thoughts was it was merely to titillate the fans - although in a interview with Italian Vogue, Hiddleston claims it was to display the wounds to the audience that he will later refuse to show to as part of his politician duties thus proving their physical existence. Yet as Coriolanus washes the blood from his body, we see him for nothing but a man. Unfortunately, I think it could have been played more subtly for impact – Hiddleston’s dramatic cries and thrashing about, splattering the front row with stage blood and water, was too much. (At least at Macbeth, we were giving warning that various fluids would be projected and everyone in the front rows sensibly wore black)

Photo by Johan Persson

What is good about Hiddleston's portrayal is he captures Coriolanus’s inner turmoil brilliantly, a soldier thrown into politics and grappling with his anguish, disdain and anger and ultimately, his own destruction. Times of peace have no place for a war hero and the arrogance and pride conditioned through warfare prove only to be his downfall as a politician as the people of Rome shun him, provoked by the scheming magistrates (Elliot Levey & Helen Schlesinger) His relationship with his mother (the wonderful Deborah Findlay) borders on being almost Oedipus-like, with her constant adulation leaving him perilously close to having a hubris complex. For me, Deborah’s performance of Volumnia was the stand out of the show and I would find myself holding my breath without even realising as she spoke.

Photo by Johan Persson

Fans of Danish drama Borgen's will have spotted Birgitte Hjort Sorensen cast as Coriolanus's wife. Whilst the character itself is nothing to shout home about, I did feel an actress of her talent was slightly wasted in a role that involves little other than weeping or seducing her husband.The seriously overblown homoerotic tension culminating in a kiss between Hadley Fraser as Aufidius & Coriolanus also felt as though Rourke’s production had missed the mark on how Shakespeare intended the relationship to be portrayed.

Photo by Johan Persson

For me personally, alongside Deborah Findlay and Hiddleston, it is Mark Gatiss who deserve special mention, providing much needed comedy relief in his outstanding portrayal of Menenius. I was moved close to tears as he begged to see his best friend and is brought low, shell shocked, betrayed and rejected when Coriolanus sends him away with a single gesture of his hand. 

Photo by Johan Persson

The final scenes, in which a sorrowful Coriolanus, moved by his mother’s pleas, ceases his halt on Rome and ultimately sacrifices itself provided calm relief to the heighten atmosphere carried throughout most of the production. Only to be shattered with a brutal and bloody execution, stabbed whilst strung upside down in chains by his ankles, flooding the stage and Aufidius with blood and leaving the audience shocked and thrilled.

Overall the play did a good job of pleasing those there to enjoy Shakespeare and those who came for its leading man. Unfortunately, the play ends its run this week and tickets are no longer available but due to popular demand, several cinemas will be broadcasting the production again on 13^th February, 3^rd of March & 11^th of March.

Search on the National Theatre Live website to find out which of your local cinemas is showing it and on which date. I strongly suggest you catch one of these as currently there are no plans to release the production on DVD.

A performance not to be missed.