Viewpoint: Screen test

Before 2006, the idea of watching a play or an opera from the discomfort of a cinema seat, with the scent of popcorn, nachos and hotdogs wafting through the air, would have been ludicrous. But New York’s Met Opera’s broadcast of a live performance of The Magic Flute to cinemas changed that. Arts institutions the world over, from Glyndebourne to the Bolshoi Ballet, started to copy the Met and soon cinemagoers were pouring out of multiplexes, amazed at the intimacy and immediacy of these screenings. 

The amalgamation of live performance and cinema sounded, to my ears at least, to be a terrible idea. When I finally took the decision last year to subject myself to a broadcast of the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, I was confident that my knee-jerk prejudice would be confirmed. I was wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would recommend it, even if getting a ticket might prove easier said than done.

The demand for these screenings has been huge, with The Met’s 2010–11 Live in HD season going out to 1,500 cinemas in 46 countries and National Theatre Live visiting 700 cinemas in 22 countries to date.

Simon Russell Beale has so far appeared in two National Theatre Live performances, London Assurance and Collaborators, and, like me, he was initially sceptical about how the broadcasts would be executed. Now he’s a convert and believes one of the key reasons that the screenings have been such a hit is that they have become special occasions for all those involved.

‘When I perform in a live broadcast I get the sense that it is quite a one-off occasion, and that means the response from the audience in the theatre has been very good and that dynamic goes through the cast as well,’ he says.