NT Live: Take Two

As you can see, I'm kind of loving the whole importing of British theatre.  The first I saw was "The Audience" through National Theatre Live so I kind of assumed all of the performances would kind of follow the same format.  In this case, 3.5 hours including a host, 30 minutes of previews, 15 minutes of countdown to interval, 15 minutes of interval interviews all on top of the actual show. Imagine my surprise when I saw "Richard II" through the Royal Shakespeare Company, and there was no host, no fancy previews and no interval countdown, in other words, parred down and perfect!  

I was sort of hoping for the parred down version this time around for Coriolanus, but not so much.  Aside from the formatting issues and the terrible seats (apparently, Loki as Coriolanus was quite a big draw for the geek girl crowd), the show itself was magnificent!  It was harsh to say the least, with quite a bid of fake blood (whoever thought dowsing their lead with fake blood and making him recite Shakespeare for most of the first act was a good idea, is a particular kind of evil) but the actors were fantastic.  I wasn't a fan of The Avengers so I didn't really get the appeal of Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but after seeing him in this, I have to say he's unbelievably talented and deserves all the raves he's getting.  And of course Mark Gatiss was superb as well, as I expected.  As for the theatre itself, it's set in an old warehouse and only seats 250 so the stage is intimate and sparse.  What they managed to do with some paint, and concrete on this tiny little stage, was pretty impressive.  Apparently, Coriolanus is usually performed in a much bigger arena seeing as most of the action takes place in the Roman Senate, but after seeing it on such a small scale, I can't imagine seeing it any differently.

Bravo National Theatre! Even though, you seem to be a bit long-winded, I can't wait until the next production!