Theatre review: Coriolanus (National Theatre)

This year's National Theatre Shakespeare is a fairly rarely-performed one, and one that I'm generally pretty happy to have stay that way; it does though get a big selling point in David Oyelowo making a long-awaited return to the stage to play Coriolanus. Set in the days of the Roman Republic, Oyelowo's Caius Martius is a nobleman and general who earned his titular surname by almost single-handedly sacking the city of Coriolis, stronghold of the enemy Volscians. On his return to Rome, among the honours heaped on him is the expectation that the next stage in his career will be election as Consul, a position of considerable political power. But first he has to gain the support of the public, whose Tribunes Sicinius and Brutus (Stephanie Street and Jordan Metcalfe) are determined to show him up as unsuitable for power.

Theatre review: Coriolanus (RSC / RST & Barbican)

Season director Angus Jackson returns for the fourth and last of the RSC's Roman plays, and although Coriolanus is set earlier than the other three, designer Robert Innes Hopkins eschews the togas of the middle two plays, to match the modern dress of Titus Andronicus. In fact this also starts with a rioting gang in hoodies, and since it will actually play first when they all transfer to London, it annoyed me a bit that it'll look there like Blanche McIntyre copied the idea. Fortunately there was less to annoy me about the rest of the production, in which Sope Dirisu takes on the least likeable of Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Caius Martius, later given the title Coriolanus after one of his many military victories, is a one-man Roman army, raised as such by his batshit bloodthirsty mother Volumnia (Haydn Gwynne.)

Theatre review: Roman Tragedies

It visited the Barbican several years ago, but now that Ivo van Hove is one of the biggest names in theatre internationally, there's enough of an enthusiastic audience for his work to sell out three more performances of one of his most famous Toneelgroep Amsterdam productions. And it certainly takes a certain amount of confidence in the director to commit to watching Roman Tragedies - it runs for six hours without a conventional interval, and is performed entirely in Dutch (with surtitles.) This promenade production conflates three of Shakespeare's four Roman tragedies - the three that have at least some basis in historical fact, beginning with Coriolanus. This first play is the least connected to the rest of the action, as we skip a couple of centuries forward at the end of it, but it does add a symmetry to the evening: Early on Coriolanus (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) sneers in disgust at the prospect of having to smell the common people if he has to campaign for their votes, a sentiment expressed again almost word for word by Cleopatra (Chris Nietvelt) near the end.

Theatre review: Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse)

"Tom Hiddleston showering on stage." According to my blog stats, I've already been getting hits from people Googling that phrase long before I even saw the show. So there you go, at least now those people will actually find something for their troubles. Yes, Hiddles does take a shower on stage, although it's more like a quick splash. Calm down, he doesn't even take his trousers off, it's not like he's getting his Coriolanus bleached. He does also share a kiss with a man, but that's more of a quick peck on the lips than anything to get the Internet too moist in the gusset. But if these two headline-grabbing moments are nothing much to write home about, it's fortunately because they're throwaway elements of a solid production, as Josie Rourke tackles a simply staged but interesting Coriolanus.