The first big-screen version of this bloodsoaked Shakespearean tragedy was the directorial debut of Ralph Fiennes (who also took the title role). That this NT Live* version doesn't have the same impact is understandable: Fiennes shot in a landscape reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia; this version is confined to the tiny stage of the 250-seat Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden.
It lends the show a cramped feeling, exacerbated by some odd, even tricksy, directorial decisions, such as having the characters sit around the walls and simply stand to make their entrances. The same stage, in the series' unforgettable King Lear, with Derek Jacobi, three years ago, seemed much larger.
Hiddleston, most widely known as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, gives a compelling reading of the title's warrior general, but his combination of macho brutality and haughty conceit - he's a man, his critics say, who "disdains the shadow that he walks on" - is not as sharply delineated as Fiennes' was.
Caius Martius - Coriolanus is a name bestowed later in recognition of a military triumph - is a military hero by turns lionised and reviled, who betrays Rome and comes to a sticky end.
Shakespeare's poetry is matched to the action, full of visceral brutality and references to body fluids, and the cast deals to it well. Findlay is great as the hero's distinctly icky mother.
