NT Live: New performances announced

NT Live was created just seven years ago. The idea is that the very best of London theatre becomes accessible to audiences all over the country via live satellite broadcast to participating cinemas. In its short history, it has proved to be incredibly popular and there are now around 700 cinemas in the scheme. Toby Sargent has been looking at the three latest productions, coming to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill and the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards.

I was something of a sceptic about the idea behind NT Live when it first began. I was a bit of a purist you see – that’s purist spelt S-N-O-B, by the way – about the theatre, maintaining to anyone bored enough to listen that the whole point of stage acting was to experience it in the flesh.

Roar of the crowd

‘The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd’ was infinitely superior, in my metropolitan view, to what was effectively live TV coverage, albeit on the big screen.

As it turns out, I was wrong. The live broadcast is considerably more sophisticated than simply plonking a static camera in the Royal Box and pressing ‘record.’ It’s a really rich cultural experience, with high production values coupled to a genuine spirit of kinship with the others in the cinema.

Capricious flying monkeys

It’s just like being there in fact, but without the expensive and lengthy ride home, at the mercy of Southern or Southeastern and the capricious flying monkeys they deploy to ensure that no late-night journey is an entirely enjoyable one.

So what’s coming up? Well, on Thursday 15 December there’s No Man’s Land, a comic masterpiece by Harold Pinter which stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. They’ve both been knighted in recognition of their prodigious talents and sit quite comfortably in the top five of our greatest living stage actors. Better yet, the show is followed by an exclusive Q&A with the cast and director Sean Mathias.

Compelling and sometimes contradictory

Saint Joan is broadcast on Thursday 16 February, live from the Donmar Warehouse and starring Gemma Arterton in an electrifying performance as Joan of Arc. Josie Rourke is the director of this play by Bernard Shaw which seeks to draw out the compelling and sometimes contradictory elements of Joan’s make-up: daughter, farm girl, visionary, patriot, king-whisperer, soldier, leader, victor, icon, radical, witch, heretic, saint, martyr, woman.

Doomed and wasted lives

Then on Thursday 9 March we can see Ibsen’s extraordinary play Hedda Gabler, the study of a newly-wed woman and how her life descends into frustration, madness and despair. Proof, if proof were needed, that you can’t beat the Norwegians when it comes to bleakness and the forensic study of doomed and wasted lives.

Check the respective websites at the links, above, for times and ticket prices.

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