What did I learn? Shakespeare at the Donmar is about on par with what you would find in a similar Chicago production—certainly better than something directed by Barbara Gaines but nothing outstanding. I had hoped, as with the RSC productions, to find (at least) superior articulation (for that The Hollow Crown seems excellent). I doubt if anything can match up to my idealized Coriolanus; that was supplied by Richard Rose's magisterial modern-dress interpretation several years back in Stratford, ON (paired with the equally excellent Taming of the Shrew).
With the theatrical imagination, film may suffice; though I have never found televised opera nearly a match for the live thing (the best way to view opera is backstage from the wings over an extended run). Theater, being textual, adapts better; yet I would never espouse film adaptation for paragon. How much my response to the Stratford production lies with Rose and how much with my needs at the time is impossible to determine—I was just starting out as a playwright and so may have been searching for other things than I would be now. In either case, the delight of live theater is that no definitive version can possibly exist in perpetuity. (Circumstances have never permitted me to see other of Rose's directorial work to know if it is as good as I would imagine it to be—his Tarragon Theatre having been dark while I was in Toronto.)