It's a brave new world

Some plays seem to be standing up remarkably well to screening and even cast new perspectives on old favourites

- Michael Billington

I WROTE in my most recent column about some of the reasons why theatre is so necessary (April 1): it feeds the entertainment industry, it acts as a communal meeting place and it helps us to understand ourselves and the world around us. Now, however, we have to find substitutes. What is startling is how quickly companies have responded to the current crisis by making their work available online; from Shakespeare’s Globe in London to the Schaubühne in Berlin, a huge range of productions is available.

This raises the question of whether a screening of a play can ever be more than second best. I vividly remember being despatched to a cinema in Chelsea to watch the first ever NT Live broadcast, in June 2009, when Nicholas Hytner’s production of Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren and Dominic Cooper, was shown in 73 cinemas in the UK and 200 around the world.

As I came out, I bumped into a well-known director who said: ‘Michael, that was better than it was in the theatre, wasn’t it?’ I hesitantly agreed that there was a certain advantage to seeing the actors in close-up in a chamber play by Racine filled with claustrophobic passion.

These days, I tend to go to live screenings of work from the Metropolitan Opera in New York or our own Royal Opera House and I’ve often thought of my director friend’s remark. The screenings give one access to work that, for reasons of distance or cost, one would not otherwise get to see.