Coriolanus
Jan. 31st, 2014 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightSo I went to see the National Theatre live broadcast of Coriolanus at my local cinema last night.
Not a play I've seen before (though I have read it), and I've never watched one of these live broadcasts before either, so a fascinating experience all round.
There was some bloke called Tom Hiddleston in it too.
Spoilers behind cut.
And yes, I did discover that people need spoiler warnings for Shakespeare, when I accidentally spoilered one of the people I went with for the ending. Bad me. Fortunately, she said it didn't ruin the play for her.
Firstly, the play itself was great, I thought. The cast was small (fifteen people in all - one of whom was Mark Stanley (Grenn from GoT), the scenery minimal (a set of chairs, a lectern and some ladders) and the background an expanse of gloomy, graffiti-covered concrete. The acting was stellar all round. Deborah Findlay as Volumnia and Mark Gatiss as Menenius were particularly good. Gatiss was genial, a peace-maker, ultimately disappointed, if not broken, that his friendship with Coriolanus counts for nothing. Deborah Findlay managed to suggest the teeniest, tiniest hint of an incestuous quality in Volumnia's obsessive love for Coriolanus without it ever being in any way conscious. She was also totally brilliant in the scene where she urges Coriolanus to be more politic towards the tribunes and plebs and in the scene where she and Virgilia plead for Coriolanus to spare Rome. The look on her face when she realises that her success means that she's doomed her son to die was just so well done.
As for Hiddleston, he really is a bloody good actor. As the director of the play, Josie Rourke, said in the interval, Coriolanus is usually played by an older man, but Hiddleston managed to pull off both the character's physicality and the intractable nature that makes him unable to compromise and eventually causes him to self-destruct, and make them seem believable despite being relatively young (though, if I can make one small criticism, I felt he made the character a little too...I dunno, vulnerable? It is of course the same trick he pulls off with Loki). Even more believable were the tears he shed in the final scene with Volumnia and Virgilia. I really don't know a lot about acting, but unless there's some sort of theatrical gadget actors use to enable them to cry on cue, those were real tears (and real snot), evoked by what came across as real, deeply-felt emotion. How he (or any actor) can do that night after night (and twice on Saturdays) for months on end is beyond me.
As a staging of a play I've never seen before, loved it. Highly recommended.
Where the live broadcast part of the experience is concerned, it was weird. I had to keep reminding myself it was live, for one thing. Because you're not right there in the theatre, you tend to forget that sometimes. So there's kind of a barrier. You don't get the immediacy of the stage experience. On the other hand, you get something that people in the theatre don't get, which is close ups. Lots and lots of them.
And I do appreciate that without this live broadcast I'd never have seen the play at all.
Anyway, I'd go again. In fact, I'm currently wondering if I have the courage to face watching Simon Russell Beale's King Lear in May. It's had rave reviews, but that play is very tough going.
Trivial stuff: At one point, Hiddleston rips his shirt off and a stream of water comes down and starts washing the blood off him. Very nice. Also, a shout-out to the slashers with a Coriolanus/Aufidius snog (though Coriolanus doesn't look too happy about it).
Not a play I've seen before (though I have read it), and I've never watched one of these live broadcasts before either, so a fascinating experience all round.
There was some bloke called Tom Hiddleston in it too.
Spoilers behind cut.
And yes, I did discover that people need spoiler warnings for Shakespeare, when I accidentally spoilered one of the people I went with for the ending. Bad me. Fortunately, she said it didn't ruin the play for her.
Firstly, the play itself was great, I thought. The cast was small (fifteen people in all - one of whom was Mark Stanley (Grenn from GoT), the scenery minimal (a set of chairs, a lectern and some ladders) and the background an expanse of gloomy, graffiti-covered concrete. The acting was stellar all round. Deborah Findlay as Volumnia and Mark Gatiss as Menenius were particularly good. Gatiss was genial, a peace-maker, ultimately disappointed, if not broken, that his friendship with Coriolanus counts for nothing. Deborah Findlay managed to suggest the teeniest, tiniest hint of an incestuous quality in Volumnia's obsessive love for Coriolanus without it ever being in any way conscious. She was also totally brilliant in the scene where she urges Coriolanus to be more politic towards the tribunes and plebs and in the scene where she and Virgilia plead for Coriolanus to spare Rome. The look on her face when she realises that her success means that she's doomed her son to die was just so well done.
As for Hiddleston, he really is a bloody good actor. As the director of the play, Josie Rourke, said in the interval, Coriolanus is usually played by an older man, but Hiddleston managed to pull off both the character's physicality and the intractable nature that makes him unable to compromise and eventually causes him to self-destruct, and make them seem believable despite being relatively young (though, if I can make one small criticism, I felt he made the character a little too...I dunno, vulnerable? It is of course the same trick he pulls off with Loki). Even more believable were the tears he shed in the final scene with Volumnia and Virgilia. I really don't know a lot about acting, but unless there's some sort of theatrical gadget actors use to enable them to cry on cue, those were real tears (and real snot), evoked by what came across as real, deeply-felt emotion. How he (or any actor) can do that night after night (and twice on Saturdays) for months on end is beyond me.
As a staging of a play I've never seen before, loved it. Highly recommended.
Where the live broadcast part of the experience is concerned, it was weird. I had to keep reminding myself it was live, for one thing. Because you're not right there in the theatre, you tend to forget that sometimes. So there's kind of a barrier. You don't get the immediacy of the stage experience. On the other hand, you get something that people in the theatre don't get, which is close ups. Lots and lots of them.
And I do appreciate that without this live broadcast I'd never have seen the play at all.
Anyway, I'd go again. In fact, I'm currently wondering if I have the courage to face watching Simon Russell Beale's King Lear in May. It's had rave reviews, but that play is very tough going.
Trivial stuff: At one point, Hiddleston rips his shirt off and a stream of water comes down and starts washing the blood off him. Very nice. Also, a shout-out to the slashers with a Coriolanus/Aufidius snog (though Coriolanus doesn't look too happy about it).
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Date: 2014-01-31 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 07:15 pm (UTC)