Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse, via National Theatre at Home, YouTube)
Verdict: Hiddleston feminises Shakespeare’s action man
Romeo And Juliet (RSC, Sunday, 9pm BBC4 and on iPlayer)
Rating: 
Verdict: Worthy lovers
Scenes For Survival (National Theatre of Scotland & bbc.co.uk)
Rating: 
Verdict: Hot Hibernian shorts
Tom Hiddleston was voted MTV’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2013. Emma Freud eagerly reminds us of this fact in the interval of the NT Live recording of Hiddleston’s earnest performance as Shakespeare’s Roman warrior hero, Coriolanus.
But easy on the eye though Hiddleston is, he has to make us sweat as well as swoon — and I’m not sure I’d want him as my commanding officer.
The warlord, who ends up a hopeless politician, is eventually run out of town as he’s too proud to stoop to the people of Rome and become their senator.
More ladies’ man than man’s man, here he’s like Theresa May trapped in the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Tom Hiddleston was voted MTV’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2013. Emma Freud eagerly reminds us of this fact in the interval of the NT Live recording of Hiddleston’s earnest performance as Shakespeare’s Roman warrior hero, Coriolanus
He starts out bellowing and beating his chest like he’s at a Rugby World Cup Final, but it turns out he’s more interested in getting in touch with his feminine side than in scorching the earth.
Josie Rourke’s intimate production, staged in 2013, seeks to fit him up as posh, buff and entitled.
But even when his head is caked in jam (in lieu of blood lost in battle) he provokes more phwoar than fear — especially when he strips off for a shower. And no one seems all that scared of him. His machismo should intimidate, yet he mists up often. Human, yes, but a bit weedy, too.
It seems to be catching: Deborah Findlay as his iron-lady mum Volumnia, who boasts that her boy ‘sucked valiance from her’, also succumbs to her feminine side.
He starts out bellowing and beating his chest like he’s at a Rugby World Cup Final, but it turns out he’s more interested in getting in touch with his feminine side than in scorching the earth
In the end, only Hadley Fraser, as her son’s enemy Aufidius, is unimpressed by Coriolanus’s newfound sensitivity.
Whatever you make of all this, it’s a tightly wrought, elemental production that uses little more than black chairs and a wobbly lectern.
It works as well on the small screen as it did on the Donmar’s small stage.
And yet its most outstanding feature is arguably Mark Gatiss as Menenius, the patrician who’s every inch the politician Coriolanus isn’t: arch, wry, wily and strangely personable. Impressively at ease with the language, it would be good to see Gatiss in a leading Shakespearean role one day.
Meanwhile, on Sunday at 9pm the RSC is hosting a Romeo And Juliet ‘watch-along’ on Twitter, where you post comments as you watch the play on BBC4.
While Instagram may have pulled a younger audience, Erica Whyman’s modern-dress ‘street’ version of the tragedy should be enough to lure the millennials.
As Juliet, Karen Fishwick is a playful Scottish lassie, while Bally Gill is the sort of Romeo you’d be happy to see your daughter bring home — assuming he wasn’t the son of your deadly foe, of course.
I also liked Charlotte Josephine, who turns Mercutio into a manic Elizabethan version of performance poet Kate Tempest. And Michael Hodgson portrays Juliet’s dad as a Hacienda casualty playing Radio 6 rave music at the party where our lovers meet… you know the type.
There may have been more exciting Romeo And Juliets, but this one is still very watchable.
As Juliet, Karen Fishwick is a playful Scottish lassie, while Bally Gill is the sort of Romeo you’d be happy to see your daughter bring home — assuming he wasn’t the son of your deadly foe, of course
Lurking quietly in the Hibernian hinterlands is the National Theatre of Scotland’s ongoing online series of short dramas, Scenes For Survival, filmed by actors in isolation.
This includes Ian Rankin’s Lockdown Blues, starring Brian Cox as Inspector Rebus at home.
In Fatbaws, a glorious monologue by Douglas Maxwell, Peter Mullan plays a hardman who has a bonkers conversation with some angry birds who want to know what happened to the ‘fat baws’ (fat balls) on his bird table.
While in Alone, Janey Godley is a middle-aged housewife chatting about her husband and sharing a mug of tea with her sausage dog.
Carousel (Lincoln Center, New York)
Rating:
Even fans might concede that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical has some pretty corny lyrics: (‘This was a real nice clambake and we all had a real good time’).
But it also has a seriously potent score, including its most famous number You’ll Never Walk Alone. So it’s worth logging on to this gutsy performance, available free as part of the Lincoln Center’s Broadway Fridays programme.
The story about wide-eyed Julie Jordan (Kelli O’Hara) falling in love with wife beater Billy Bigelow (Nathan Gunn), who works at the local circus, can be hard to swallow.
But director John Rando’s concert performance sets the New York Philharmonic on stage ensuring the melodies keep ahead of the iffy yarn. And when Stephanie Blythe steps up for You’ll Never Walk Alone, there won’t be a dry eye on Merseyside — unless it’s at Goodison Park.
LincolnCenter.org/BroadwayFridays
Terfel is terrific (along with his harp’s desire)
The Son Of A Farmer: Bryn Terfel, Staying At Home (Grange Park Opera, Surrey’s ‘Found Season’)
Rating: 
Verdict: A star sings about stars
Through the magic of YouTube, from Saturday we shall be able to watch a great singer at home, with his talented wife Hannah Stone playing the harp, and their little daughter and dog staying amazingly quiet.
It’s all thanks to Surrey’s Grange Park Opera’s Found Season (created after its summer season was lost to Covid-19).
Sir Bryn Terfel’s theme is stars, and he reminds us that at the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, where he duelled with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, it was the Lieder prize that he won.
He begins with Ar hyd y nos (much better with John Ceiriog Hughes’s Welsh words), which he recorded with orchestra and chorus — this performance is even more warm-hearted and suited to the intimacy of TV.
Through the magic of YouTube, from Saturday we shall be able to watch a great singer at home, with his talented wife Hannah Stone playing the harp, and their little daughter and dog staying amazingly quiet
Terfel introduces each number sitting at his piano, with a poster for his Falstaff at La Scala visible over his shoulder, but the actual recital takes place in his panelled parlour.
Stone, the Prince of Wales’s former harpist, is fully in the picture. Halfway through, Sir Bryn interviews her about the problems of accompanying on harp rather than piano.
Debussy’s early Nuit d’etoiles and Schumann’s Mein schoner Stern display his gift for languages; and the harp is thoroughly apt for his only aria, the harp-toting minstrel Wolfram’s hymn to the evening star from Wagner’s Tannhauser.
He officially finishes with Javert’s Stars from Les Miserables, with words by my old Mail colleague and fellow South African Herbert Kretzmer. It is put across with all the force of an international opera singer.
Then he awards himself an encore, Frederick Keel’s lovely song Trade Winds, making every word of John Masefield’s poem clearly audible. It is another number that he has recorded, but many viewers are sure to treasure this informal rendering.
The Son Of A Farmer is available to view from tomorrow until July 12. Visit grangeparkopera.co.uk for details.
Tully Potter