I've only seen one other production of this play, about 40 years ago in NYC, with Morgan Freeman in the lead role and Denzil Washington being a spear-carrier. I remember enjoying that, which is more than can be said for this. Josie Rourke's production is one of those that puts me right off Shakespeare, in which everyone spends a lot of time lustily shouting at each other for no apparent purpose, issuing strings of seemingly random words at great volume. I couldn't make sense of what anyone was saying or what it all meant, but could only go, "Right, well she's obviously very cross with him, so I'll just go with that". At the core of it is Tom Hiddleston, bland and dull, the cheese string of the acting world, turning Coriolanus into a walk-on in his own play. Only Mark Gatiss and Elliot Levey manage to make sense of their lines If I'd seen this as a kid I'd never watch another Shakespeare again.
Review of Coriolanus
