Global theatre

The Press's theatre reviewer, ALAN SCOTT, experiences a new dimension to a visit to the theatre.

I counted myself lucky when I saw Waiting for Godot at the Isaac Theatre Royal two weeks ago. To watch an outstanding London production, with a cast headed by Ian McKellen, was a slice of good fortune I had not expected. I would happily have climbed over a coil of razor wire to see it.

Imagine my surprise then, when through an equally felicitous roll of the dice, I found myself last Sunday watching Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw, two celebrated British actors, leading a marvellous cast in the National Theatre production of London Assurance.

Waiting for Godot came to Christchurch courtesy of the plane and by way of the skies.

London Assurance turned up at the Rialto cinema via deep space, beamed there by satellite through a venture from Britain's National Theatre called NT Live.

If you have not heard of it yet, you certainly will, for it is an enterprise that could revolutionise the way we think of watching theatre.

It began in June 2009 with the production of Phedre, filmed in high definition and broadcast live via satellite to cinemas worldwide.

London Assurance is the fifth production in this first season and has played globally at more than 300 venues.

If you are in Manchester or Munich, you can see the production live as it is played in London. Elsewhere, you can see it a few hours or several days later through a screening of the high-definition recording.

Either way, the very feeling of the whole thing is as if it is happening here and now. You see the audience before curtain up and you can hear them laughing throughout the play. There is a filmed buildup outside and a real interval of 20 minutes.

The quality of the filming is excellent, both in terms of the definition and of the camera shots of the play. Indeed, with numerous close-ups, you probably see the expressions on the actors' faces in better detail than the real audience does. What you don't see, though, are the reactions of the actors who are off camera.

Watching London Assurance was an exhilarating and exciting experience.

The production was certainly not a film and was as close to theatre as you can get without actually being there.

At $33 a ticket, it wasn't cinema prices either. It may never be as good as live theatre, but it comes exceedingly close.

The play, written in 1841, was a dazzlingly funny romp, a sort of Victorian rehash of the classic Restoration comedy style, with Beale and Shaw playing Sir Harcourt Courtly and Lady Gay Spanker. The names alone give the game away, and with a lawyer, Meddle, and a country squire named Harkaway, you know the play will be a laugh a minute.

Indeed, it was an exquisite production delivered by absolute masters of the craft. The new season will launch on October 14 with Complicite's A Disappearing Number live from the Theatre Royal, Plymouth.

* For more information, see www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ntlive.

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